


"Hero Work"

by bakedgarnet



Series: Hero Work [1]
Category: The Incredibles (2004)
Genre: Angst, F/F, Lots of wine, Slow Burn, banter becomes kisses probably, house arrest, regular visits from your friendly neighborhood elastigirl
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-22
Updated: 2018-07-26
Packaged: 2019-05-26 20:48:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 52,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15009152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bakedgarnet/pseuds/bakedgarnet
Summary: Evelyn is released on house arrest, and Helen comes by to visit. And she keeps coming back every time.





	1. How About A Thank You?

Evelyn was no idiot.

 

She knew that the only thing keeping her ass out of federal prison was her family’s legacy— the billions of dollars tied to her name, the pleading Winston did on her behalf in order to vouch for her morality.

 

Yet, she couldn’t help but feel… smug. Like she had gotten away with something so much larger than life, and she did, technically. She pulled off one of the greatest schemes in the history of Metroville, and _did_ get away with it— if the million dollar mansion she currently lounged inside of had anything to say about it. Legality be damned when you’re wealthy, she supposed.

 

A brisk knock sounded four times against her front door and jolted her from her thoughts. She lifted her head up from where it had been resting against the arm of her leather couch and stared at the door long and hard, a snap feeling of agitation tearing through her. She was already exiled to her home, as magnificent as it was, what the hell could anyone else possibly want? She mentally answered her own question, though, when mental images of reporters and paparazzi flooding her front lawn refused to go away.

 

All she had to defend herself with if it were some justice-seeking vigilante were her kitchen knives, seeing as though they had confiscated anything that could be turned into some sort of technological weapon. Not even a blender or a toaster to fight off her attackers with.

 

She dropped the book that she had been staring at the same page of for the past half hour on her stomach and resolved to face whoever with was knocking at her door that way eventually.

 

“Who is it?” She called out, and she got no response other than another knock identical to the first. She grumbled to herself as she finally stood, dog-earing the page of her book she was on, and strolled over to the thick mahogany separating her from her visitor. Or murderer. With any luck, it was Winston and he was on the phone so he couldn’t call back out to her. She unlocked the door and turned the knob under her hand, swinging it open to reveal—

 

Helen Parr. Or, Elastigirl.

 

“What the hell are you doing here?” Evelyn asked, exasperation dripping from her tone.

 

“Well, hello to you, too.” Helen crossed her arms across her chest, cocking her hip out to the side as she regarded Evelyn through wide brown eyes. The wind had tousled her hair a bit from its usual immaculate style, and she looked… softer somehow, dressed in a white sweater and jeans instead of the super hero costume. It had only been a couple of weeks since their last encounter, and unsurprisingly an ocean of distance had opened itself between them where there used to be nothing.

 

“What do you want?” Evelyn leaned against the doorframe, feeling tension creep up her shoulders in response to the woman in front of her. Looking at her face drew back violent images of the plane exploding, shrapnel hurling itself out into the sky and pelting downward like flaming missiles. She remembered looking up at Helen for a split moment, weighing her choices and feeling the emptiness of defeat, before kicking her in the chin and diving toward her own doom. The feeling that had racked through her when Helen’s grip had slipped on her body, the feeling of freefall, of plummeting toward certain doom by her own hand-- She felt her hands start to shake and quickly shoved them into the pockets of her silk pajama pants, pressing them against her thighs to quell the trembling.

 

“Uh, gosh, how about ‘thanks for saving my life, Elastigirl!’” Helen’s face was growing red, seemingly infuriated by her less than grateful welcome.

 

“Helen,” Evelyn corrected.

 

“What?”

 

“For Christ’s sake, your name is Helen. You can drop the hero bullshit, it’s just me.” Evelyn turned on her heel to walk the long way back to her beloved couch, but left the door open, indicating for Helen to follow.

 

Evelyn heard the door close behind her and plopped back down onto the white leather, leaning over the table to reach the bottle of red wine she had been drinking earlier and refilling her own glass. The deep red liquid tumbled gracelessly with how quickly she poured it, sloshing up the sides of the curved glass.

 

“If you want some, grab a glass from the bar.” She nodded her head toward an intricate set-up, more bottles than most people could recognize by name lined up by the colors of their labels. A dark wood bar counter created a half circle around the far corner of the room where the shelves of alcohol were standing. She watched with heavy eyes over the rim of her glass as Helen stretched her arm across the entirety of the space to pluck a glass from the few lined up. Her arm snapped back into place, and she continued her cautious walk over to where Evelyn had planted herself.

 

“Thank you,” Evelyn eventually said as Helen lowered herself onto the couch cushion a healthy distance away from her. It was a bigger distance than it had been when they were still on good terms. Evelyn tried not to think about that, though.

 

“For what?” Helen asked, and Evelyn didn’t have to look at her to see the smirk on her face.

 

She rolled her eyes, “For saving me. It must have been confusing when I said that no one really wants to die, and then severed my own parachute, so to speak.” In another split moment flashback, the hairs on Evelyn’s arms rose as she got a bursting image of nothing but bottomless ocean rushing up to meet her flailing body.

 

“You were trying to escape justice,” Helen said, shrugging like she had already accepted that as truth.

 

Evelyn snapped back to reality in an instant, quirking her head to the side and raising an eyebrow at the woman next to her.

 

“I wasn’t, actually.”

 

“Then what was it?” The look of disbelief on Helen’s face made something inside of her twist with frustration.

 

“Tell me why you’re here first,” Evelyn countered, leaning back into the cushions and crossing one silk pajama-covered leg over the other one. Helen looked visibly uncomfortable, shifting where she sat for a moment before stretching her arm out to reach the bottle of red wine and filling up half of her glass with it. She took a long drink, her neck bobbing with every swallow, and finished the entire thing. She refilled it before she finally responded.

 

“I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said in the ice chamber,” she admitted.

 

“What part?” Evelyn snorted, her words muffled by taking another sip from her glass.

 

“All of it. And the lengths that you went through to make sure that Supers stayed illegal—“ she paused for a bit and rubbed her fingers across her forehead like she was trying to keep a headache at bay, or figure something out.

 

“The kind of pain you must’ve been in to do all of that… I can’t even imagine. My husband always tells me I have too big of a heart for the damaged, and maybe he’s right, but I heard they let you out on house arrest, and… I needed to come see you for myself.”

 

“Oh _brother_ , do you hear yourself? You came to visit a felon on house arrest who tried to ruin not just your life, but your family’s and every other Super out there— because you _feel bad_?” Evelyn’s raspy chuckle rang out through the high ceilinged living-room. “I almost killed you!”

 

“You know I have more faith in humanity than you do. Blame the optimist in me, I guess.”

 

Evelyn was taken off guard by the reference to a conversation they’d only had a few weeks ago, one filled with laughter and smiles, and the warm glow of alcohol staining their cheeks red. The day that Evelyn almost dropped the whole plan right where it was for the woman sitting next to her now. The emotion that bubbled up inside of her was met with sharp anger and anxiety, and they both crushed out whatever that other feeling was with violent hands.

 

“Let me talk to the cynic instead, _please_.”

 

“Sorry, she’s out right now.” Helen cracked a smile at her, and Evelyn turned her head down into her lap to avoid the inevitability of returning it. It felt too much like old times. Everything about this, about the two of them, felt familiar. Evelyn was cursing herself for allowing her fondness to get so far.

 

“So, what, you came here to make yourself feel better?”

 

“Ah, ah, ah. You said you’d tell me why you tried to dive hundreds of feet into the ocean, if it wasn’t to run away from the law.” Helen said, and Evelyn could see her trying to catch her gaze from the corner of her eye.

 

Evelyn hummed around another sip of bitter red wine before placing her glass on the table with a _clink_. Instantly regretting it, for she generally always needed something to be doing with her hands, she settled for picking at her short, manicured nails instead.

 

“Everything caught up with me at once, I think,” she said quietly, her mind taking her back to that exact moment when she was convinced that she was going to die. She felt her skin get hot just thinking about it, and the collar of her matching silk pajama button-up suddenly felt entirely too tight. She reached up with both hands and undid the first two.

 

“One second I was hell-bent on taking Supers down for good, and then I saw everything blowing up around me, literally, and I was just _exhausted.”_ She turned her head, finally, to meet Helen’s concerned eyes. “I haven’t wanted to be around for a really long time, Helen. Having this much money can buy you all the therapists in the world, sure, but money doesn’t make it work. When you lose parents the way Win and I did, you try and find something or someone to blame it on. Win picked the law banning Supers— I picked Supers themselves. I invested everything I had left of me into that plan, and when it fell apart, well…”

 

Evelyn shot a sad smile at the woman next to her, “There was nothing left in me to give. So I jumped.”

 

Helen was silent for a long moment, staring at her with such an intensity and focus that Evelyn both wished to break their gaze to disrupt the intimacy of it and maintain it as a sign of strength.

 

“Should you be on suicide watch?” Helen finally asked.

 

“Hell no,” Evelyn laughed mirthlessly, “halfway down I realized I was terrified of dying. Which is the _only_ reason why I thanked you. I didn’t deserve your kindness.” She looked back down at her lap.

 

“It wasn’t just kindness, it was my duty.” Helen’s voice took on that high-and-mighty hero undertone that she _loathed_.

 

“Please don’t start with the ‘ _I’m just doing my job, ma’am_ ’ hero talk. Spare me.” Evelyn said.

 

“Alright, alright,” Helen conceded, before stretching her neck out until her face was a foot away from Evelyn’s shocked one.

 

“As much as you hate Supers, you can’t tell me this isn’t pretty cool,” she said, and Evelyn could sense that she was trying to lighten the mood.

 

“Grow up,” she sighed. She had never seen anyone try so hard to make her smile. Most just accepted her broody demeanor as it was and left it at that. Evelyn learned quickly that the more money one has, the less people tend to ask questions.

 

“You _never_ wished you had powers?” Helen asked, retracting her neck until her head was back in place.

 

“I don’t have anything against _powers_ , I just don’t want everyone with them running around trying to save the day. This isn’t some DC or Marvel comic, this is real life with real people’s lives on the line. We don’t need a few thousand vigilantes roaming around in tights waiting in dark alleys for someone to get mugged,” Evelyn said, casting a knowing look at Helen, one eyebrow raised.

 

“You know, I happen to like the tights.”

 

Evelyn’s eyes roamed down to Helen’s long legs, crossed with the top foot bouncing periodically to an unheard beat, and she gave a small smile.

 

“I bet you do.”

 

They sat in silence for a long while after that, not an awkward one by any means, though the tension in Evelyn’s shoulders had yet to be released. The wine had helped to ease most of her jitters, though having Helen there next to her wasn’t helping her to forget why she was drinking in the first place.

 

“I’m not here to make myself feel better, you know.” Helen said out of the blue, and even Evelyn’s quick mind took a second to recall her earlier question to her.

 

“Then what are you here for? Besides a nagging curiosity and pity?” The words weren’t bitter coming from Evelyn’s mouth. She said them as if they were indisputable facts written in a textbook.

 

“Frankly, I’m here because you’re lonely, and I think having a friend would be good for your reform— since the prison system is less than concerned with _that_ part of justice. And we were friends once. Before,” she gestured vaguely around the room, “all of this.”

 

Evelyn stared at her in disbelief, shaking her head slowly before dropping it down into her hands. Her shoulders shook first with laughter before it bubbled from between her lips, and then suddenly she was in hysterics. Something hot and liquid sprung from her eyes. Helen's words weren't funny enough for the tears that streamed between her fingertips as the sound racked through her chest, and she lost her breath in the panic of not knowing whether or she was laughing or sobbing.

 

Helen’s hand was on her back in an instant, rubbing gentle circles that made her flinch away violently, and the part of her not being torn to bits by the anxiety that had been building in her shoulders and the pit of her stomach tethered itself onto that hand even as she jerked away.

 

“Sorry, sorry!” Helen said quickly, ripping her hand away as quickly as it had come. “What do you need?” Her voice was set in the same determination that leaked from it when she was on a mission, a tone that had become so familiar, always followed by a victory, that some part of Evelyn subconsciously already trusted that she would do whatever she asked. The thought made the panic inside of her well up even more.

 

“Just— go,” Evelyn croaked out.

 

“Whatever I said, I didn’t mean any harm by it—“

 

“Get out!” Evelyn’s voice raised sharply, and her swollen eyes finally shifted to meet Helen’s, whose were wide and sad like a kicked puppy. The guilt that tore through Evelyn’s insides only steeled her resolve.

 

“I don’t need you to save me,” She growled.

 

“I’ll come back tomorrow,” Helen said eventually, standing from the couch and making her way across the large floor space.

 

The swirl of emotions tearing through Evelyn’s body did not entirely allow for her to articulate herself, and possibly explain to Helen why she was lashing out. Hell, _she_ couldn’t even understand why she was lashing out. Everything was suddenly overwhelming, the windows too bright, the silence too loud, the air too hot.

 

“Don’t bother,” she said loud enough for the other woman to hear.

 

“Bye, Evelyn,” Helen said softly on her way out.

 

The door closed gently behind her, and Evelyn stared at it with fluctuating feelings of contempt and regret. Her eyes wandered down to the coffee table in front of her, and Helen’s half-full glass stared right back at her. She sat in a stare-down with that wine glass for an unspeakable amount of time, until she reached over and brought the glass to her lips, right where Helen had left an imprint with her chapstick, and downed the rest of the wine.

  



	2. "I Promise"

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen makes a return despite what Evelyn said the day before, and a promise is made.

When Helen Parr followed through on her vow to return the next day, it was 1:16PM. The sun was beaming through the floor to ceiling windows that overlooked Evelyn’s spacious living room, and there was not a cloud in the sky despite what the gloomy weather the night before had suggested. When Helen had actually made her presence known, though, wasn’t until 1:27PM. Evelyn had seen and heard her shiny new motorcycle pull up when she had first arrived, and was waiting with bated breath to see if she would ever knock, or take her up on her command to stay away from her house.

 

Evelyn had been messing with the house arrest ankle bracelet, as much as she could without setting it off, and as much as she could with what limited tools she had. All of her technology had been confiscated under the agreement of her serving time under total house arrest, and there was only so much that she could figure out about the device now without tearing the damn thing apart with her bare hands. In the interim, the gold watch on her wrist reflected the sunlight off onto the high ceiling every time she turned her wrist just slightly to check the time. When those quick four knocks sounded against her front door again, she felt a wave of relief wash over her before it was immediately replaced by anger.

 

“Go away,” she yelled, holding her ankle up closer to her face to examine the device. Her index finger brushed curiously over the black encasing. Any type of microcontroller was hidden within the box screwed into the bracelet, and they hadn’t left her with a screwdriver at all— let alone one small enough to take the thing apart. Even if she did have those things, tampering would send an alert to the monitoring station before she could even blink. She huffed out a breath of agitation.

 

The four knocks rang through once more, and the next “I said go away” was halfway out of her mouth when the door swung open, causing her heart to thump heavily in a brief panic.

 

“You should really lock this thing,” Helen said casually, entering her home with far less trepidation than she had shown leaving it the day before. She was in jeans again, dark washed, and a white and gray plaid button-down. Her sleeves were cuffed up to her elbows.

 

“What the hell—“

 

“You know there are people out there who want you to answer for the stuff you’ve done. I personally think you should be more careful, but what do I know?” Her tone was light, teasing unlike it had been yesterday. Helen walked into the massive front room after closing and locking the door behind her, eyes taking in everything for a second time, and somehow just as amazed.

 

“Maybe I want them to come,” Evelyn recovered from her shock and fired back petulantly, turning her attention back to the device above her foot. “It’s not like they wouldn’t have good reason. I’m surprised even you came back.”

 

“You shouldn’t be. I meant what I said yesterday about being your friend. It’s gonna take more than a bit of tears and yelling to drive me away. I have three kids.” Her light laugh echoed off the walls of the massive room. She continued her leisurely stroll about the living space, walking over to a tall statue by some famous sculpture Winston had gotten Evelyn two birthdays ago. She appraised it with visible awe, taking a step back and stretching her neck upward a bit to get a better look at the top of it.

 

“I was going to say, don’t you have a family or something you should be taking care of?” Evelyn asked, turning her gaze up to look at Helen as she made her way closer to the couch they had sat on yesterday. Evelyn watched from where she was sat cross legged on the floor, a plush, deep purple rug beneath her butt.

 

“Kids are at school. Baby’s with Edna. Husband’s out fighting crime.” Helen shrugged, “I’ve got better things to do than to sit around and wait in alleys for a mugging, don’t you agree?” Helen sent a knowing smile in her direction, a reference to their last conversation, and Evelyn could only shake her head in disbelief.

 

“For as many degrees as I have, and as many awards that I’ve won for my work— from mechanical engineering to computer science— I don’t think you’ll ever make sense to me.”

 

“I’ll take that as a compliment. Keeping you on your toes.” Helen’s energy was light today, bouncy. She was like a content child the way she meandered closer to Evelyn, a small smile fixed on her lips.

 

“You’re in a good mood today,” Evelyn said suspiciously, dropping her ankle— and by extension the bracelet— unceremoniously.

 

“Ask me why,” Helen said.

 

“I don’t think I care that much,” Evelyn feigned nonchalance.

 

“Ha, ha. Very funny. I’ve figured you out.” Helen declared proudly, placing her fists on either hip and spreading her legs in a corny hero stance. The smile on her face was megawatt, and the pure joy radiating from her was far too contagious for Evelyn’s peace of mind.

 

“You’re not good with people. You said you never know what they want. I’d be willing to bet you don’t have many friends— if any at all, especially after your arrest, but it’s been that way for most of your life hasn’t it? So, that wouldn’t bother you so much. I don’t think you’re lonely. You’re the type to thrive in solitude, aren't you? But you lost your parents sooner than anyone should, and, considering that you think your brother is immature, you’ve taken care of yourself and him for a long time now. Which means that other people taking control and taking care of you freaks you out, doesn’t it?”

 

Helen looked so pleased with herself, and Evelyn suddenly envisioned her sitting up all night thinking about what she did wrong, about what could have possibly reduced the woman she went to visit down to panicked tears yesterday. Something in her chest hitched when she then imagined how excited Helen would have gotten finally putting the pieces together, anxiously awaiting her next trip to the mansion in order to set things straight. She swallowed whatever was caught in her throat and breathed out a laugh.

 

“I always said you were good.”

 

“Why didn’t you just say so! You don’t have to push people away, just tell them how you best operate. Friendships rely on communication just as much as relationships do.”

 

Evelyn didn’t have the heart to tell her she had overlooked a crucial root of her raging anxiety— near death experiences tended to make anyone jumpy.

 

She snorted, “Sorry, married woman. I wouldn’t know.”

 

Helen suddenly looked confused, dropping her arms out of her hero stance and getting closer to where she sat. The hero lowered herself down to the ground with an agile ease that spoke to her flexible abilities.

 

“What do you mean?”

 

“Never been in a relationship. Despite what the tabloids have claimed in the past.” Evelyn shrugged. It was never a subject of embarrassment for her, merely something that had always been true. No men had suited her interests, and most were too intimidated by her wealth and accomplishments to even try.

 

“I guess when you’re rich people are less on your back about marriage, huh?” Helen asked.

 

“Not particularly. I don’t have any parents asking me for grandkids, and Win is the face of DevTech. He gets all the glory and magazine covers. Fortunately, I get overlooked most of the time. The media kept tabs before because of the Deavor name, and now for obvious reasons, but I pretty much get to fly under the radar.” She paused for a moment, “I used to, anyway.” She heard the forlorning in her own voice, and cleared her throat to rid herself of it.

 

“You’ve got all the privacy in the world here, though, right? I mean… except for your door being unlocked. Seriously, you gotta stop doing that,” Helen reprimanded her.

 

Evelyn raised an eyebrow at that, a smile growing across her lips.

 

“I can’t believe you’re here, on my living room floor while I’m on house arrest, worrying about my safety after I literally tried to end your life. I feel like I’m in some… drugged-out dream.”

 

“At least that means you’d dream about me,” Helen said, winking at her playfully, “even if it had to be on drugs.” She leaned back on her hands and watched Evelyn absently tinker with the band around her ankle without actually making any progress.

 

“Do married, super-powered women with three kids tend to flirt with known criminals? Or is this just a you thing?”

 

Helen sighed long and heavy, searching Evelyn’s face for something— Evelyn sure didn’t know what— before she replied.

 

“They do when their husbands are too busy reliving their glory days out in the streets to pay attention to them anymore. And when they still kind of resent their wives for being the face of the big ‘Superheroes have returned’ craze,” Helen said. Her usually wide eyes were squinted and downcast when she finished talking, eyebrows furrowed down over her nose. Her good mood from moments ago had vanished into the air, and a part of Evelyn blamed herself even though she knew that there was no way for her to have known.

 

She didn’t even have a television. If she did, the last things she would have wanted to see, anyway, were hero-dominated headlines. Some part of her, the part where her dark humor and ability to make a joke of anything resided, wanted to tell Helen that if she had simply allowed her plan to work, she could have still been in a happy relationship with her husband.

 

She was too smart, and Helen was too kind to her, for the words to leave her lips without tasting acidic.

 

“I’m sorry to hear that,” she said instead. She watched Helen take a deep breath, dragging herself back together by the threads, and release it with a smile.

 

“It’s okay. This isn’t about me. How are you holding up?”

 

“Eh, same as always. Plotting world domination. Stealing candy from babies. The usual evil villainess duties.” Evelyn smirked, allowing her head to lazily loll to the side as she leaned back on her hands as well, matching Helen’s position.

 

“You’re not an evil villainess,” Helen said, “you’re in pain.”

 

“What are you, my therapist now?”

 

Helen gave her a wry look, cracking a smile that reached her eyes. “How would that make you _feel_?”

 

Evelyn laughed unexpectedly, somehow able to sit across from Helen Parr with no nagging urge to tinker and no debilitating anxiety swirling her stomach into knots.

 

“Worried because my last six didn’t go so well.”

 

“Six? What, were they surly, too? Are you sure they’re not in prison somewhere unjustly? Framed for some crime they never committed?” The smile never left Helen’s face as she spoke, as if she were genuinely having a good time going back and forth with her.

 

“Asshole,” Evelyn said with no bite behind it.

 

“Me? _You_ did it.” Helen’s laugh reminded Evelyn of something welcoming and open. Something warm.

 

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Evelyn sighed and dropped her eyes down to the floor between them, considering the past few weeks leading up to this moment.

 

“I didn’t expect to like you so much, you know,” she said suddenly. Helen was visibly surprised by the admission, Evelyn could tell by the way her limbs suddenly froze in place, her stomach barely even moving to breathe.

 

“When I just had the beginnings of the plan, I hadn’t factored in getting attached to you…” She trailed off for a moment, debating intensely inside of her mind whether or not she wanted to keep talking, but her mouth decided for her.

 

“I wasn’t really going to kill you up there— in the plane I mean.” Something in Evelyn’s stomach seized up, and it wouldn’t relax until she said everything in that moment. She felt her throat tighten a bit, and pushed through the emotion as if it wasn’t even there.

 

“I kept looking at you losing oxygen and these _flashbacks_ of all that time we spent together kept— anyway…” she trailed off again, scolding herself for how discombobulated her thoughts were coming across as being. “Believe it or not, you almost made me call the whole thing off.”

 

“Me?” Helen asked, shock coating the single word.

 

“After our talk in the back room, after I introduced you to all of the other Supers who came out to support you. You were telling me to go out and seize what I want— to assert myself is what you said,” Evelyn stopped to laugh in disbelief, “and you almost hit the nail on the head, except that I wasn’t gunning for my brother’s job, but I had never had anyone support me so entirely before, let alone someone who may as well have been a stranger.” Her lips pursed, turning downward at the corners with something raw and heavy that felt like shame.

 

Evelyn felt guilt pool at the pit of her stomach with sharpness and acidity. Guilt because it could have been anyone, truthfully. The first Supers that Win had brought in could have been on the receiving end of her handiwork, and it hit her like a train how desperately she wished it _had_ been anyone else than the woman sitting across from her in this moment.

 

“I knew you were too good— on the inside— to be the one at the head of my plan. But it was too late. And I lost sleep over that, believe it or not. Whether it’s any consolation. Or not.” Evelyn finally looked into Helen’s eyes fully, and was shocked to see the raw emotion there.

 

“Told you that you aren’t evil.” Helen gave a genuine smile, one that was a little sad around the edges. It was as if she were sad for the turn things had taken, sad for the things that had driven Evelyn to this point, and sad for how much she wished things were different.

 

What things, though? Evelyn couldn’t tell.

 

“Just hysteria, then?” Evelyn asked with a wry smile, looking across the short distance between her and Helen. That distance was smaller than it had been yesterday. Less like an ocean, and more like a creek.

 

Helen let out a short laugh, nodding her head slowly as she appraised her right back. “That’s my diagnosis,” she said.

 

The two sat in comfortable silence again, Evelyn rising to her feet to make her way to the kitchen eventually. She rifled through the refrigerator for something to eat, though she wasn’t particularly hungry. Pulling out a bowl of grapes, she rinsed them thoroughly under the sink faucet and drained the water before setting it in the middle of the counter and popping a few into her mouth. Helen joined her after a while, sitting at the bar stool on the other side of the island. She sat with her cheek propped up on her fist, watching Evelyn with an expression that the other woman couldn’t read.

 

Evelyn snuck glaces at her periodically, and chewed the grape bursting between her teeth slowly in thought. She recalled being unable to sleep again the night before— this part was not unusual— but she had not lamented the lack of rest as she usually did. She had welcomed it, allowed her mind hours to comb through every interaction she’d had with Helen Parr yesterday. Decipher everything that was said, and everything that wasn’t. Her coveted thoughts of Helen used to be shrouded in planning, meticulous steps to be followed and executed exactly. She ran the plan in her mind like clockwork, accounting for as many things that could go wrong as possible and planning around them.

 

The one thing she had never accounted for was the depth of Helen’s compassion. Such a simple, laughably obvious thing to have overlooked so completely. An idiotic oversight for someone of her intelligence.

 

Now when she thought of Helen, as proven by last night, it was no longer through the that inevitable lense of deception and manipulation, of knowing what lay ahead of their relationship. It just _was_ . She thought, now, about how her smile looked when she was giddy with the excitement of a mission. The sound of her voice during a panic, yelling over high winds through high stress situations. Her laughter in pure exhilaration as she sped through the expressway on her motorcycle. The look of pride on her face when she strolled into Evelyn’s living room this afternoon. _I’ve figured you out_.

 

Something warm blossomed in her stomach even thinking about it now. Evelyn frowned and tried to stomp the feeling out, shoving three more grapes into her mouth and chewing them more aggressively than she had intended. She bit the inside of her lip and valiantly tried to hide her wince.

 

“They let you keep the refrigerator?” Helen asked out of the blue, her tone half joking and half surprised. Evelyn shot a look at her as she chewed, swallowing the juicy treats and swiping her tongue over the blood rising from the wound before speaking.

 

“Can you believe it? Amateurs.” She said, and Helen laughed softly.

 

“I’d love to see what you could manage to make out of that thing.”

 

“You don’t think I could make my daring escape with nothing but a refrigerator and kitchen supplies? I have half a mind to be offended, Helen Parr.” Evelyn teased back, feeling disturbingly content with the company, a complete 180 degrees from the anxiety-ridden mess she had been the day before. Something about Helen’s energy was infectious. Or, something about Evelyn was less terrified. The thought made her uneasy all over again.

 

“I have a feeling you’ll be okay,” Helen said.

 

“When have you ever been a good judge of your feelings about people?” Evelyn shot back, and something about it seemed more weighted than she had intended it to be.

 

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Helen didn’t seem offended, just curious by her choice of words.

 

Evelyn sighed, “You thought _I_ was morally sound. Now look where we are. Anyway, I wasn’t saying that to—“

 

“Evelyn,” Helen said seriously, “do you think I would be here right now if I thought you were morally corrupt? You were righting what you genuinely believed to be a wrong. Whether that was borne from misunderstanding the value of a hero, or seeing the situation through a lense that was clouded by _loss_ and _anger_ …”

 

She paused for a moment, “You weren’t doing what you did to be vindictive. For money, or power, or fame. That’s what makes you different than the bad guys my family throws in jail. You thought you were protecting the safety of the people. I can’t say I don’t see where you were coming from. While your methods were a bit extreme, I also can’t say that they wouldn’t have been effective had things gone differently.” Helen kept her eyes trained on Evelyn the entire time that she spoke. Sincerity and that damned compassion shone valiantly in her brown eyed gaze, and Evelyn’s fist had become white-knuckled on the kitchen island.

 

“This is what all you heroes do, isn’t it? Act all noble, the judge and jury outside of the law? That’s how you get people to fall in line, instill their trust in you. Put their very lives into your hands.” Evelyn’s voice had grown bitter.

 

“Why are you lashing out at me right now?”

 

An image of Evelyn’s father flashed before her eyes, his crinkly-eyed smile and laugh, a bright picture in her mind’s eye. Her mother, broken hearted and free falling into an abyss of depression. The sound of her weeping. Her funeral.

 

Evelyn’s hand smacked the table so hard that it made the both of them jump, and she clenched it back into a fist and brought it down to her side as if to keep it from doing anything else erratic.

 

“Because I don’t get you! What person in their right mind isn’t always working some kind of angle? What the hell do you gain from being here? Some sick, hero fantasy of turning a criminal into a law-abiding citizen? So that you can look at me, all wide eyed and hero-worshipping, and say ‘Look what I did!’” Evelyn’s voice slowly rose louder, fury undercutting every word that she said. Her face and neck felt like flames were licking at her skin, and the blood in her mouth made her taste nothing but iron. It overwhelmed even the residue of grape juice still on her tongue.

 

“So you can brag about being the one who turned the woman who tried to destroy Supers forever into a helpless sheep like everyone else?” Even as Evelyn spoke, she knew that she was being harsh. She knew that she was lashing out in fear rather than true anger, and none of that could stop her from the verbal attack she had unleashed.

 

What she didn’t know, was how patient Helen was going to be about it all.

 

“Do you feel better now?” Helen asked, her expression unchanged. If anything, that sad smile was back. And this time the sadness touched her eyes.

 

Evelyn released the breath she had been holding and deflated right along with it, slumping over the counter and holding her face in her hands. Her long fingers weaved into her hair, and she felt a sudden urge to pull it out. She felt like she was losing her mind.

 

“No,” she muttered.

 

“What do you need?” The question was reminiscent of what she had asked yesterday during her last meltdown, and this time Evelyn didn’t kick her out.

 

Instead she said, “I don’t know.” Her eyes were trained unseeingly on the marble of the island countertop.

 

“Can I touch you?” Helen asked permission, a different tactic to yesterday.

 

Evelyn gave a small grunt that could have passed for either an affirmation or a negation. Suddenly, gentle hands were tugging her shoulders around, and then her face was buried in Helen’s shoulder. Those wiry arms slipped themselves around her torso and Evelyn felt herself remain stiff in the embrace. Her perfume was soft, barely a hint of something flowery, and Evelyn had never been good with affection before, but this was some second power under Elastigirl’s belt— it must have been. The calm that washed over her was inhuman.

 

“Whatever it takes to prove to you that I’m not here working some hidden agenda, I’ll do it.” Helen’s arms were firm around the small of her back, locking her in place with a solidity that would never have hinted at the elasticity of her body.

 

Evelyn relaxed bit by bit into the embrace, never going as far as to return it, but simply allowing it to happen.

 

“I know you’re hurting, and I know that Supers have caused more pain for you than any one person should have to deal with. I’m not here as a Super… I’m here as your friend. It’s just me. Not working a single angle, I promise.”

 

“You said you thought you’d be good for my reform. Yesterday.” Evelyn said, pulling back and staring into Helen’s dark eyes only half a foot away from her own. Suspicion laced her words, and Helen guiltily looked away.

 

“That’s kind of what I told the detectives in charge of your case when they asked. They’re picky with the people they clear to visit you, you know. This is the toughest house arrest I’ve seen in my life,” Helen laughed nervously, “and I figured if I came right out with the real reason why I was here— well we saw what happened yesterday when I got too personal. And just now.”

 

“Don’t lie to me again,” Evelyn surprised herself with the command.

 

“That’s rich coming from you,” Helen smiled, looking back up to meet her eyes. Her arms tightened a bit around her, and Evelyn was hyper-aware of the lack of space between them.

 

“Yeah, well. Rich words from a rich woman,” she tried to joke to ease the tension building between them, and Helen finally took a step back, a laugh ringing through the air.

 

“It’s a deal. Hey, I need to head home, but I’ll come by again later this week, okay?” Helen said, stepping around the island counter and heading toward the transitioning floor between the kitchen and the living room. At the last moment, she stretched her arm out and snagged a couple of grapes for herself. The limb snapped back in place and she popped the fruit into her mouth.

 

“Sure,” Evelyn shrugged, watching her with forced nonchalance even though the smell of Helen’s perfume still danced in her nose, and the part of her where Helen’s arms had been wrapped felt like it may burst into flames at any moment.

 

“And stop trying to break into your ankle monitor!” She called back as she neared the front door. “You’re going to set the trigger off.”

 

“Mmhm,” Evelyn hummed, waving the other woman away.

 

“And _please_ come lock the door behind me.” Helen’s voice stopped getting farther away, which meant that Evelyn was supposed to go right then. She sighed.

 

Helen was waiting with an amused smile as Evelyn got closer. They walked together until Helen was standing at the front door, and Evelyn was leaning in the doorway.

 

“Be safe,” Helen said, nodding toward the locks on the door. Evelyn waved her off and closed the door between them. She flicked all three of the locks into place.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Guys. GUYS. The response to the first chapter has been... there are no words. I'm endlessly grateful to each of you that commented or left kudos. Your support has been adding to my writing frenzy, and I've been cranking out stuff for this story like mad. Just. Thank you for being complete angels.
> 
> Much love!
> 
> (come talk to me about Hevelyn hell on tumblr: bakedgarnet.tumblr.com)


	3. A Certain Type of Hero

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen comes bearing gifts, an intense conversation is had, and Evelyn drinks five glasses of wine.

By the end of the week, Evelyn was on the verge of something too heavily resembling cabin fever. Spring was settling in right on schedule, and there was only so much of it that she could experience through her floor to ceiling length windows. The estate was large enough that she got out into the backyard garden as much as she could to feel the cool breeze across her face, and the gentle sun peeking through the clouds.

 

She had finished her book— _The Yellow Wallpaper_. It was a short horror story from the 1890’s about a woman confined to bedrest in the wake of being diagnosed with depression and a tendency for hysteria. The bedroom eventually drove her to insanity. Evelyn was disturbed by it, and burned it along with the logs of wood she had burned in the fire pit outside the night before.

 

She wanted to be building something; she ached to put even the most basic device together if it would keep her hands and mind busy. Something about wasting away idly in her million dollar home was feeling less and less like she had gotten away with something great and more like the punishment it was designed to be. Not to mention how frustrating it was doing basic things around the house with no electronics. Even the regular versions, not the state of the art ones she had engineered herself, would have sufficed.

 

Her maid came by the day before to clean and bring her groceries, and the short, slender worker had eyed her with an air of unease the entire time she was there. Evelyn eventually sent her home early, an extra wad of cash pushed into her hand, so that she could be left alone without feeling like a monster.

 

She was laying in her bed, staring up at the pristine white ceiling and relating more and more with how the woman in _The Yellow Wallpaper_ had driven herself to insanity staring at the wall all day. A chill rose goosebumps on her arms at the eeriness of it, and she must have missed the familiar four knocks against her front door, because the doorbell ringing had nearly scared her to death. It was a deafening chime, like a church bell. People visited her so seldomly that she always forgot how much she hated it.

 

She dragged herself out of bed and controlled the urge to speed toward the door with heavy determination. When she unlocked all three locks and swung the door open, Helen was standing there, barely holding on to a stack of newspapers, magazines and board games.

 

Evelyn looked down at the pile of things in her arms, and upon recognizing what they were, she clenched her jaw and turned her head away for a brief moment to compose herself. Something was tearing through her chest, something warm, and volatile, and dangerous, and Evelyn beat it back with a stick.

 

“You’re something else.” Evelyn remarked finally, taking a step back from the doorway and allowing Helen to enter. The other woman shrugged her shoulders with a self-satisfied smile playing on her lips.

 

“What can I say?”

 

“Why so many newspapers?” Evelyn asked after locking the door back, walking over toward their usual spot in the living room. She sank down into the couch and pulled her legs up to cross atop the cushion. Her hand tried to smooth her hair down from where she was sure that it stuck up in every-which direction, but she was unsure of how successful she was.

 

“You’ve missed a lot of days,” Helen said, tossing the last several issues of the Metroville Times newspaper down onto the coffee table. “I didn’t peg you as the magazine type, but if you were I didn’t want to pigeon-hole you, so.”

 

Helen dropped down one of nearly each magazine currently on the stands beside the newspapers, and Evelyn’s hands roamed over several of her favorites before settling on IEEE Spectrum, an engineering, science and electronics magazine. She ran her fingers over the white front cover. The words in the top right corner that caught her eye said _Ultrasonic Studies, page 116_ . Right below it: _IEEE International Convention and Exhibition, March 21-25_.

 

She should have been there. Her heart felt heavy.

 

“Thank you,” she said quietly, startled by how small her own voice sounded. Nothing could have prepared her for something so thoughtful coming from the woman standing before her. Suddenly, all of the things she had said to Helen before, yelling and freaking out on her with little prompting— they seemed ridiculous now. Maybe she was just genuinely a good person. And maybe Evelyn didn’t have to put her life into her hands, and could merely accept kindness from a Super without allowing it to make her weak and reliant.

 

Feeling an overwhelming urge to turn the attention away from herself, Evelyn cleared her throat and asked, “So, how’s the super family?”

 

Helen huffed a content sigh and lowered herself onto the couch after stacking the board games atop each other on an empty section of the table. She propped her elbows on her knees with her fingers linked beneath her chin. “For the most part? Pretty good. Only thing is Jack-Jack’s powers are still a struggle to get under control, but,” she shrugged, “not too bad. He’s learning fast.”

 

“You better hope that kid stays on the right side of things. For all the powers he has? He’s going to be something the world’s never seen before when he’s older.” Evelyn said, propping her elbow on her bent knee and resting her cheek on her fist as she gazed at the woman beside her.

 

A shadow crossed Helen’s face as if she had been down that line of thought before, and her brows furrowed over her long eyelashes. Evelyn regretted saying anything about her family at all, since it seemed to be a point of sensitivity every time that they came up.

 

“We don’t have to talk about that. Sorry,” Evelyn said.

 

“No, no, you’re okay. I just have to make sure that I stay a strong influence in his life. I don’t want him getting too overzealous like his father and Dash. I also don’t want him to let all of that ability go to waste and give up the uniform when he’s old enough to decide who he wants to be.” Helen sighed again, dropping her hands down until they rested between her knees and allowing her head to fall forward.

 

“It’s scary enough raising a baby at all, you know? And to have to worry about all _seventeen_ of his abilities, too… To think that I wanted the family to give up fighting crime, and now I’m changing everything I’ve ever taught my kids.” She laughed self-deprecatingly.

 

Evelyn struggled with herself for a moment, a part of her that was still young and bitter wanted her to beg Helen to keep that kid away from the vigilante lifestyle. She could see so many potential outcomes where he would get seduced into villany, and then the whole world would be under seize, nevermind Metroville. Yet, another part wanted to try, as Helen had with her a few days ago, to make her feel better. She wanted to somehow return the favor of the selfless things Helen had done for her lately, but she had never been good at that kind of thing. That stuff was all up Winston’s alley. Winston, who didn’t even want to talk to her. She shook the thought away.

 

She supposed now was as good of a time as any to try.

 

“I think that when the time comes… you’ll make the choice that feels right. You’re a pretty smart woman. I think that if anyone had the influence to keep him on the right track, it’d be you.” Evelyn searched the side of Helen’s downcast face as she talked, hoping that her words seemed sincere. Not because they weren’t, but because she had publicly declared her hatred for the very thing that Helen struggled with, and now here she was encouraging it.

 

“I appreciate that,” Helen said, turning her head to lock eyes with her. They sat with nearly a hand’s width of space between their thighs, close enough that Evelyn could feel the body heat coming from her.

 

“Besides, if he turns to villainy I’ll make sure I’m the one to partner up with him. Then at least you’ll know he’s in good hands,” Evelyn joked, leaning over to bump her shoulder against Helen’s playfully.

 

The laugh that tumbled out of Helen’s mouth was full, short and genuine. It gave Evelyn a tingling feeling in her gut to have made her laugh when she had looked so defeated.

 

“Is Bob treating you well?” The question sounded far more loaded than it should have in Evelyn’s ears. The undertones of protectiveness that surged through her when she asked it were probably what gave her that feeling.

 

“He is. He’s in Argentina, can you believe it? Apparently he has a big fanbase over there, and they wanted him to go tour South America along with a few other Supers now that the law’s been lifted.” Her face was unreadable, voice giving away no indication of negative or positive feelings toward the subject. Evelyn’s eyes squinted.

 

“Here, look,” Helen said, stretching her arm across the table to pluck the top Metroville Times paper off of the stack. The front cover held an old picture of Mr. Incredible, posing and all, taken about fifteen years prior. There were also three other caped heroes in dated photos that Evelyn couldn’t name for the life of her. The headline read: _American Heroes: International Tour of 1962_

“Is _Elastigirl_ not American Hero potential?” Evelyn asked, and even with the way she felt about Supers being glamorized and marketed to the public, she still felt a bit offended for her. She watched Helen’s lips purse into a forced smile as she shrugged her shoulders and placed the newspaper back down. Her arm snapped back into place, and she said nothing for a long moment.

 

“Who else is missing that you’d think be on the list?”

 

Evelyn turned her eyes back down to the paper and thought for only several seconds before it dawned on her. “Frozone?”

 

Helen raised an eyebrow and gave her a knowing glance, a sad smile playing at the corners of her mouth, “I think they were only looking for a certain type of hero.”

 

“They seriously didn’t ask either of you? You’re just as famous, if not moreso, than whoever those other three assholes are on the cover,” Evelyn felt her blood boil with sudden intensity.

 

“It’s not a big deal. I’m happy Bob gets to finally do what he loves—”

 

“Bull _shit_ ,” Evelyn interrupted her, feeling something caged inside of her start to scratch at the surface. “You’re the entire reason being a Super is legal again in the first place! I should know!”

 

“Evelyn,” Helen sighed, “it’s not about me. I had my moment of fame, and now it’s Bob’s turn to do good.”

 

“Your moment was only two weeks long! Do you think your husband is the type to play tag-team now that he’s America’s saving grace again? And, what, you’re gonna play house wife for the next five to ten years until he’s done being Mr. Incredible? And then be too old to go out and do what you worked your ass off for?” Evelyn felt the rage beneath her skin like bubbling lava, held at bay for the time being, but it ran a current under her words that filled them with heat. “What happened to being at the top of your game? To not leaving the saving the world to the men?”

 

“You hate the whole concept of Supers, why do you care so much now?” Helen was staring at her strangely, a mixture of confusion and something else Evelyn couldn’t put her finger on.

 

 _Because it’s you! You’re different!_ Evelyn wanted to shout, but she huffed and broke their gaze instead, turning her head upward to stare at the high, white ceiling.

 

“I do. But if I have to suffer through the torture of watching innocents put their fragile lives into the hands of super-powered strangers, I’d rather those strangers be people I know are going to do what it takes to actually do some good. Not just show off for the press, or that are the ones people call the most because they’re the only ones getting coverage.” It took everything in her to admit that much, feeling like a traitor to her own values for the words that left her mouth.

 

“I think that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me,” Helen said, nudging her shoulder back, “but the reality is, people gave me the time of day again because I was the only one breaking the law to fix it. Now anything I do is gonna get overshadowed— or criticized— because there are other players in the game now, and if they can be picky they’re going to. It’s just the way things are. Lucius and I spoke about it over the phone— we’re both stuck between a rock and a hard place.”

 

“Damn it, assert yourself! Isn’t that what you told me?”

 

“You can’t always assert yourself in this world. Or in a marriage,” she said, referencing their earlier topic of Mr. Incredible’s return. “Sometimes all you can do is compromise.”

 

Evelyn scoffed, allowing her weight to fall backward until she was practically engulfed by the cushion on the back of the couch. Oh, how “Elastigirl’s” radical mindset had changed over the years. “Now you see why I’m not married.”

 

“I mean… you _are_ pretty intimidating,” Helen smiled, one eyebrow raised as she shrugged.

 

“Even for you?” Evelyn asked, and that question, too, felt heavier than she thought it would.

 

Helen paused for a beat to consider the question, twisting her lips up as she stared up at the ceiling and thought it through. “I don’t think so. If you ever got smart with me, I’d probably just remind you about that time I shot you out of a plane.” She was brimming with unreleased laughter when she turned her eyes back down to meet Evelyn’s.

 

Evelyn, however, was not grateful for the flashback. The t-shirt she wore suddenly felt constricting, and her throat got tight as she recalled the feeling of being sucked out of the broken plane window, free falling. It seemed like every memory of that day always led her back to— falling. Plummeting toward her own demise. A chill wracked through her.

 

“Sorry,” Helen said genuinely, seeing her reaction. Her hand hovered over her thigh, pausing while awaiting permission, and as soon as Evelyn gave a tiny nod, her hand was spreading warmth down her knee. “I shouldn’t joke about that. I think with my powers, I forget how terrifying something like that can be when I can just turn myself into a parachute, or a boat, and be fine.”

 

“Yeah, what else can you shapeshift into?” Evelyn asked, struck with instant curiosity. Honestly, she was grateful for anything to distract her from the churning in her gut at that moment.

 

“Whatever is bigger than my normal size. Which is to say that I can’t shrink or anything, but I can pretty much do anything else. I don’t usually do people or animals just because it’s not a really helpful weapon unless you really just want to scare someone to death— it’s pretty gross in my opinion.”

 

Evelyn appraised her for a moment, imagining Helen’s visage distorted to take on the general features of another, and cringed a bit.

 

“I can’t lie, those are pretty impressive abilities, regardless.”

 

“God, you should’ve seen me trying to get the hang of them when I was younger,” Helen chuckled, seemingly falling into nostalgia.

 

“Was this before or after the mohawk?” Evelyn smirked, leaning her elbows forward onto her knees and tilting her head forward a bit toward the woman beside her.

 

She recalled seeing the old black and white photos pulled up when she ran research on Elastigirl’s background in order to make her experience coming back into heroing as authentic to her old days as possible. Evelyn remembered stumbling upon the old image from twenty-seven years ago of Helen in the Elastigirl suit, hair buzz cut on the sides with a longer patch of hair straight down the center of her head. She had been leaning on her Elasticycle, one leg down on the ground and the other hiked up across the bike. Her head was whipping around toward the camera, eyes facing something out of the image, with a look of concern on her face.

 

Evelyn remembered thinking how rugged she looked, intimidating even though she was in her late teens.

 

Helen’s hand on her knee tightened suddenly and brought her back to the present, the look of both shock and horror on her face hilarious as she steadily turned red.

 

“Who told you about that?” She yelled.

 

“Relax, I saw a picture when I was looking for references to get inspiration for your new Elasticycle.” Evelyn shrugged it off, needing her to understand that she was the last person to laugh at her for her past stylistic choices. She actually hadn’t looked half bad.

 

“Oh god,” Helen groaned, allowing her body to lean over toward Evelyn so that she could hide her burning face in the other woman’s shoulder. Evelyn stiffened for a moment before attempting to will herself to relax. It was just Helen. Friends did this— sought comfort in each other.

 

“Looked pretty badass to me,” Evelyn said. She locked her body into place, afraid to move lest she disturb whatever physical moment was happening between them right then.

 

“You don’t have to lie,” Helen grumbled.

 

“What reason do I have to lie? I would’ve been making fun of you by now if it had really been that bad.” Evelyn said, moving nothing but her eyes to get a glimpse at the woman buried into her side. Something dangerous inside of her was wriggling happily in her stomach, making her heart thump with heavy beats against her rib cage. She was suddenly aware of every breath she took, and hoped that Helen couldn’t hear the cacophony of sound inside of her chest.

 

“Would you?” Helen asked, a note of surprise in her voice as she pulled away just slightly to look into Evelyn’s eyes. Helen’s body was still leaned into her, and she could see every one of her eyelashes from this close up. The light brown of her eyes were darker around the outsides, and Evelyn swallowed heavily around a growing tightness in her throat.

 

“Probably not,” Evelyn said quietly.

 

And then the moment had passed as quickly as it had come, and Helen was back in her original position on the couch. “I think I was almost offended,” she said, though she was grinning.

 

“I dunno, driving away the only person who seems to want to speak to me sounds like something I’d accidentally do,” Evelyn said.

 

Helen eyed her as if she wasn’t sure of whether or not she was joking. Truthfully, Evelyn wasn’t sure if she was or wasn’t herself.

 

“Good thing you’re stuck with me.”

 

Evelyn searched Helen’s sincere gaze, seeing nothing but honest brown eyes staring back at her. Her eyes traveled down to the gentle protrusion of her round nose, and then to the arch of her top lip pulled taut in a smile.

 

If Helen noticed her gaze drifting, she didn’t say anything about it.

 

“Does Bob know you come here?” Evelyn asked after a long silence.

 

Helen seemed caught off-guard by the question, freezing for half of a second before stretching to pick up one of the magazines across the table and flip through it with an air of nonchalance.

 

“Why?” She asked, and Evelyn’s eyes narrowed at the flippant tone she used.

 

“Answer the question,” Evelyn said.

 

“No, he doesn’t. He thinks I’m still out doing volunteer hero work, but with a different company and a different objective, obviously, than before. Happy?” She asked, still not looking at her, eyes roving through this spring season’s hottest trends.

 

“What ‘hero work’ did he think you were doing last time?” Evelyn could hear the confusion in her own voice, searching her mind’s vat of knowledge for what the hell she was talking about.

 

“It’s something we told our kids so they wouldn’t worry about me while I was working with DevTech,” Helen sighed, “like an activist position. And what would he care anyway? He’s not even in the country.” She shrugged as if her words were as casual as her tone.

 

Evelyn stared at the side of her face, allowing the full picture of the information to come in slowly to her so that the strange feeling in her stomach wouldn’t erupt into the volatile thing it had been trying to all day.

 

“You don’t want to tell him about me,” she stated.

 

Helen looked up at her then, her brows furrowing over her eyes as she shook her head. “Do you think he’d be happy I was still friends with the woman who, in his eyes, tried to destroy us?”

 

Evelyn’s lips parted, eyes still narrowed as she watched Helen. “Why are you under the impression that’s not who I am?”

 

“Because I got to see _more_ of you. He only knows you by how you first met, and then by what you’ve done to get arrested. He wouldn’t understand,” Helen seemed to be pleading for _her_ to understand.

 

Evelyn felt her jaw clench.

 

“So while your kids are at school, you drop the baby off at Edna Mode’s—“

 

“You know E?” Helen interrupted.

 

“Of course I do, she’s hotter than Galbachy right now so I don’t know why my idiot brother thought he should design your suit instead— anyway— you drop the baby off and then come here all day? Leave in time to be back home when the kids come back and pick up the baby after you’ve traded your bike in for the car?” Evelyn laid out what the image in her mind told her for Helen to confirm or deny, and had a strong feeling that there would be no denial.

 

She watched Helen’s shoulders slump forward, and she finally stopped pretending to look through the magazine.

 

“Yes.”

 

“ _Why?”_ Evelyn could not understand, for the life of her, why anyone would go through the trouble of lying to their family and maintaining a sort-of double life just to come visit her on a semi-regular basis.

 

“I don’t know!” Helen erupted. Evelyn flinched backward a bit, having expected any other reaction than the sharp raise of her voice that occurred. “I’m just doing what my gut is telling me to, and it’s been at war with my better judgement for days, so can we please just drop this? I know it’s screwed up. I’m figuring it out.”

 

Evelyn blinked several times, adjusting to the sudden hostility that had burst from the other woman. She felt remorseful for pushing her that far, but she had to see that something about this was all off-kilter.

 

“I just don’t want this blowing up in your face down the line,” she said, “I don’t want your husband storming down here to either smash me to pieces or rip you away. Or both,” she tried to make light of the situation, but Helen’s eyes were still downcast.

 

“He’s not going to find out,” Helen declared solemnly.

 

“I hope you know what you’re doing.”

 

Helen looked up at her with a tired smile and rested her head on her shoulder, likely without thinking. Evelyn’s heart started doing what it usually did when they made prolonged contact, and she was careful not to move a muscle.

 

“Yeah, me too.”

 

They continued on the couch well into the morning and afternoon. The sunlight had shifted angles through which it entered the house as the time flew by, and by noon they were on their third glass of red wine each. Giggles reminiscent of children filled the living room up to the ceiling as they played silly board games to ease the tension in the air, the alcohol doing a nice job of that on its own. Their conversation had purposely steered away from anything that would have dampened the other’s mood, and the mutual understanding that blossomed between them not to bring up Helen’s marriage anymore seemed to be the biggest promise they had made to each other without saying a single word.

 

When three o’clock came around, Helen had long since stopped drinking so that she could ride her motorcycle home with no issue. Evelyn hadn’t thought it would be enough time for her to sober up after three glasses of wine, but apparently something about her abilities allowed her to metabolize alcohol faster, and Evelyn reluctantly accepted it as fact. Helen had sworn not to lie to her, and some terrifying part of her trusted that she wouldn’t.

 

When she left, the sun was still high in the sky, beaming down on the freshly budding trees out in her front lawn. Helen was framed by a halo of sunlight when she was stood out on the front steps, eyes alight with the laughter still in both of their chests. Evelyn was leaned against the doorway, the sight of seeing Helen off from her front door becoming awfully familiar.

 

“I hope the magazines and newspapers keep you entertained until I’m back,” Helen said.

 

“Thanks for those, by the way. And the games,” Evelyn said sincerely. Though Helen had stopped drinking, she was on glass five and the effects of it were making her head warm and her words far more loose.

 

“It was nothing.” Helen waved away the thanks, though her smile and blush gave it away that she was glad to be appreciated.

 

“Get home safely,” Evelyn said, “and tell the kids I said hi,” she joked.

 

Helen cocked her hips, a smile playing on her mouth. “When pigs fly.”

 

“Eh, I could make it happen.” Evelyn said through a drunken grin, imagining what she would need to construct wings big enough and efficient enough to carry a pig through the air.

 

“Don’t hold your breath,” Helen said, stepping back slowly and waving one hand before heading down the stairs. Evelyn closed the door behind her with a small smile still on her face, until she heard the locks turning behind her with no doing of her own.

 

She whirled around and saw one pale hand stretched beneath the door, feeling around the thick wood for the second and third locks. Her mouth dropped open in surprise, and then laughter ripped through her chest as she sped to the window and watched Helen’s arm reach all the way into her home from down the long outside stairway. The other two locks clicked into place, and her arm snapped back to where it was as if nothing happened. She watched the other woman walk briskly to her bike, kick the stand up, and start it loudly.

 

Evelyn made a mental note to ask her who had designed this one. It wasn’t nearly as sleek as her own handy work, but it was passable. It probably transformed into the Elasticycle with the click of a button, and Evelyn felt something bitter creep up on her content attitude to know that someone else was designing her accessories.

 

When she revved the engine, Helen turned to face her in the window, shooting her a smile before taking off down the street.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You're all the greatest. I don't know how else to say thank you for the overwhelming support except for to give you more chapters, haha. 
> 
> I'm thinking updates every Tuesday and Friday. Can't wait for y'all to see what's coming next for these two :)
> 
> As always, come talk to me on Tumblr (bakedgarnet.tumblr.com) Much love!


	4. Wine for Breakfast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn learns two earth-shattering truths, and Helen is both the support system and the problem.

Evelyn was having wine for breakfast this morning. The desire to cook for herself had never been a strong one, and since she wasn’t allowed to go out to a nice restaurant for food as she usually did, she was becoming more and more aware of her lack of self-care habits. Nevertheless, she was on her third glass when a frantic beating at her door cut through the oppressive silence of her home. She put the fashion magazine that she was hardly reading face down on the coffee table and stood up slowly, feeling the alcohol in the heaviness of her limbs.

 

The knocking continued, urgent and loud, and Evelyn flicked the three locks and pulled the door open with a deep frown clouding her face. She was greeted with one intense-looking Helen Parr, eyes round and chest heaving as if she had sprinted to her.

 

“Where’s your bike?” Evelyn asked, confusion lacing her tone.

 

Helen shook her head, pushing past her and waving the question off. Evelyn turned to look over her shoulder at the riled up woman as she locked the door back, raising an eyebrow impatiently.

 

“That’s not important, I need to tell you something very serious and I need you to sit down.” Helen’s voice left no room for argument, and something chilled and sharp trickled through Evelyn’s veins.

 

She slid down to the floor against the front door and crossed her legs, noting Helen’s temporarily amused look before she was back to being serious.

 

“Your brother said that Fironic and Gazerbeam were the Supers your father had on call, right?” Helen said, beginning to pace back and forth in front of the woman seated before her. Her low top shoes made a light tap against the hardwood floor with every step, and her hands stressfully clenched together behind her back. Her eyes were focused entirely on one tiny spot on the floor.

 

The mentioning of Evelyn’s father made her feel anxious even through the alcohol. She took another large swing of wine.

 

“Yes…”

 

“Well, I’ve been doing some research, mostly calling my husband every few hours to answer my questions, and lining news reports up with the dates, and— have you ever heard of Syndrome?” Helen asked suddenly, pausing in her pacing to stare at Evelyn seriously. The little frown line that appeared between her eyebrows was one of fierce concentration, and Evelyn had only seen her so serious during missions.

 

“Uh... guy who engineered a bunch of inventions to give everyone super powers,” she said slowly, “I met him once or twice at conventions. He was sucked into his own jet by his cape.” Evelyn answered, mirth coloring voice at the last part. Her head dropped a bit to the side as she peered up at Helen. “What’s _he_ got to do with my father?”

 

Helen nodded as she dove into explanation, “Syndrome had been systematically taking out Supers with his Omnidroid robots. Sending them on these fake missions and allowing the intelligence of the bots to build so that they’d be unstoppable when he unleashed them on Metroville.”

 

Evelyn watched her speak through squinted eyes, needing to focus in order to take in all the words that were flying from Helen’s mouth. Drinking on an empty stomach was making things a bit foggier than three glasses would normally do for her.

 

“And when Bob infiltrated his computer, this list of Supers declared ‘terminated’ came up,” Helen said conspiratorially, “Gazerbeam was one of them. So was Fironic.”

 

Evelyn’s heart dropped into her stomach, placing her glass on the floor and scrambling up to her feet. She needed to do something, to move, or else the nausea rocking through her core would erupt. “What— what are you saying?” Her hand blindly fumbled behind her to grip the doorknob, steadying herself. She needed to hear Helen say the words, she wouldn’t dare let herself assume—

 

“They didn’t not answer because Supers were illegal. They didn’t answer because they were dead,” Helen said quietly. “Your father placing his trust in them may have cost his life… but if they’d been alive they would have come ten times faster than the police had, than the _ambulance_ had. He could’ve been saved.”

 

Helen’s face was scrunched up in sympathy, and Evelyn knew that her expression was as devastated as she felt. Her knees were weak, though it could have been due to all of the wine sloshing around her empty stomach as well. She felt her throat constrict, and some violent wave of denial swept through her instantaneously.

 

“You don’t know that they would’ve come,” she said weakly.

 

“I knew them. They would have.” Helen’s voice was solemn.

 

Evelyn swallowed heavily, releasing the doorknob to place her hands on her hips and maybe ground herself. She didn’t know what else to do with them.

 

“This doesn’t…” her voice cracked so she tried again, “This doesn’t change anything,” she tried to rationalize.

 

“Maybe not. But it also means that the faith in Supers and people’s reliance on us isn’t misplaced— it means you’ve been blaming the wrong people for years. And it means that the only one _to_ blame, aside from the burglars themselves, is already dead.”

 

Evelyn felt her bottom lip jump between her teeth as she tried to stave off tears, anger rolling through her veins and burning through the alcohol in her system until she almost felt perfectly sober. She wanted to hit someone, punish the world for putting her through this loss twice— the loss of her father and, as a result, her mother. The loss of her only driving force since their death. She had put every ounce of pain that she had into her blame on Supers for making people weak.

 

Sure the both of her parents could have still been alive had they hidden in the safe room, but it was sinking in that him calling for the Supers could have been just as effective— he hadn’t made a bad call. Syndrome had just gotten to them first. The nausea made an urgent reappearance.

 

“I’m gonna be sick,” she gagged, nearly sprinting around Helen’s patient and concerned body to the bathroom. She didn’t even bother with the light switch, throwing herself to her knees and heaving over the toilet as the red wine made its return. Her stomach rolled, and a sweat had broken out across her forehead and arms. Helen was behind her in an instant, not needing to hold her short hair back, merely caressing her shoulders in a comforting gesture.

 

“I’m right here. You’re alright,” she murmured gently, and Evelyn couldn’t even hate her for the way that she immediately felt calmer. Trusted her words as fact. Everything seemed off-balance. She was on solid ground, and yet she was free falling all over again. The thought dragged another heave from deep inside of her chest.

 

When she was done, and the nausea had mostly subsided, she sat back on her heels and couldn’t tell if the tears stinging her eyes were from vomiting or from devastation. The emotions swirling around her head were too much, and her first thought was to go back to drinking, but it only made her stomach roll again so she wiped it out of her mind. Helen brought her up to her feet, and her hands were gentle beneath her shoulders.

 

“Are you okay?” She asked.

 

“I don’t know,” Evelyn muttered, flushing the toilet. She moved over to this sink and avoided looking at the mirror across from her. She tugged the medicine cabinet open and pulled out a bottle of mouthwash, which she proceeded to swish around in her mouth. It burned the cut inside of her lip from when she had bitten it days ago. When she spit it out into the sink and turned the faucet on to run the liquid away, she briefly imagined that it was her sanity washing down the drain.

 

She was getting sick of the intrusive thoughts.

 

“I’m sorry,” Helen apologized, and Evelyn turned around until she was face to face with the other woman. The lack of space between them was startling— Evelyn hadn’t realized she was so close behind her.

 

“Don’t be. I’m just finding out everything I thought to be true was a lie… no big deal.” She tried to joke through the aching in her chest, but her humor fell flat. Helen’s eyes were sad for her, and she held her arms out to offer a hug while a sympathetic smile tugged at her lips.

 

Evelyn stared at her arms for a long moment, appreciating being given a choice. After a while, she raised her own arms and looped them around Helen’s waist. The feeling of being tucked into her body was a strange one, something that was foreign and concerningly electric.

 

Helen’s arms rested around her neck, and there was that soft, barely there scent of flowery perfume again. Evelyn buried her face into her neck, the smell keeping her grounded as chaos wracked through her brain. The thought that Helen had taken it upon herself to even look into her father’s murder was astounding, and feeling a wave of gratitude pass over her, she tightened her arms around the other woman.

 

Helen’s breath hitched in surprise at the sudden fierceness of the embrace, but relaxed almost immediately and weaved her fingers through Evelyn’s short hair.

 

“I’m so sorry,” Evelyn whispered. The sound of her own voice shocked her. It sounded so small, and weak.

 

“For what?” Helen asked, and Evelyn had to resist the urge to scoff because what kind of question was that?

 

“For everything,” Evelyn said, pulling back just enough to look Helen in the eyes, “I’m sorry I almost killed you, I’m sorry I _used_ you, I’m sorry I put your family in danger—“ her voice cracked and she took a breath before resuming. “I’m sorry I put your _kids_ in danger,” she exhaled shakily, “I’m just… so sorry.” She closed her eyes.

 

Maybe it was the alcohol still in her system that made the words flow so readily, or maybe it was the fact that Helen had proven to her, once again, just how genuinely good and caring she was. Maybe it was both.

 

“I don’t deserve any of this,” she said quietly, “I don’t deserve you in my life, and there’s not a single thing I can do to make any of that up to you.” She felt a sad, self deprecating smile pull her lips upward and reopened her eyes.

 

“Don’t say tha—“

 

“You know it’s true. I know it’s true. I don’t need you to defend me from myself,” she let out a humorless chuckle.

 

“Well, this is what friends do.” Helen’s face was filled with nothing but pure support, and _care_ , for the woman in her arms, and Evelyn got a sudden— largely horrifying— urge to kiss her. The thought came and went as quickly as it could, but it shook her down to her very core that it had come at all. She couldn’t have thoughts like that, especially about Helen Parr. It had been made quite clear to her what people thought about women _like that_ when she was in college. Similar feelings had arisen for a girl she had class with two semesters in a row, and when she’d finally built the courage to make a move, the devastation from the rejection had sent her on a bender for months.

 

Homosexuality was a mental disorder— according to the greater population anyway. It was more along the lines of the overarching “hysteria” for women “afflicted” with being attracted to the same sex.

 

And the realization that these feelings were repeating themselves, well, that’s how Evelyn realized that she may or may not have romantic feelings for Helen Parr. Elastigirl.

 

The thought made her scrunch her eyes closed. _You fucking idiot_ , she mentally scolded herself. Her forehead dropped down defeatedly to rest on Helen’s collarbones, and she resigned herself to suffering because she was selfish and couldn’t make Helen stay away from her even if she wanted to.

 

“What’s wrong?” Helen asked. The concern in her voice made Evelyn’s stomach clench.

 

“Nothing.”

 

* * *

 

The rest of the day found the two of them in Evelyn’s kitchen, the owner of the house sitting on top of the island counter with her legs pulled up to cross in front of her, and Helen putting dishes away from her half an hour spent making them both breakfast.

 

Steam from the pancakes on a plate Helen had said she didn’t even want to imagine the price of rose up in ghostly tendrils. She was putting eggs on Evelyn’s plate when the seated woman had a sudden bout of curiosity.

 

“Who designed your new bike?”

 

Helen looked up from pushing eggs onto her own plate with a guilty smile on her lips. “E designed the look, but Bob had a few connections to some people to actually build it. I have to say, it doesn’t ride as smooth as yours.”

 

Evelyn felt a proud smirk make its way to her face, glowing with the compliment. She was happy with this moment, happy to not have to think about the weight of the news dropped on her only an hour ago.

 

“Of course not. Hey, let me design you a new one! Since I can’t build it myself.” Excitement lit up inside of her like a spark to flame, and she found her hands itching for a pencil and paper.

 

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” Helen waved her off, sliding the syrup across the counter to where Evelyn was sitting, and then handing her a fork and a knife.

 

Evelyn took the utensils, cutting into her pancakes distractedly. “No, I’m serious. It’ll give me something to do while I try not to go clinically insane.”

 

“Well, I can’t stop you… and I wouldn’t necessarily be _upset_ if you decided to do it,” Helen said, her eyes warm with unspoken appreciation. Knowing what her feelings were now, what that caged and fearsome thing was that rattled around inside of her, made her look at Helen in a new light entirely. Her every action felt weighted, Evelyn spiraling down the vortex of wondering if there was ever any chance in this stupid world that Helen would feel the same way.

 

“I’ll get started as soon as you leave and head back to your other life,” Evelyn joked.

 

A strange look crossed Helen’s face, but she turned her head downward to suddenly focus on her own plate before Evelyn could read it. She handed Helen her knife, offering that they share one, and she took it with a restrained smile.

 

“Did I say something wrong?” She asked, overcome with the urge to apologize. She mentally swore that Helen and her brother were the only people alive who could make her feel so conscious of not hurting their feelings.

 

“No, no… I’m just thinking,” Helen said.

 

“About what?” Evelyn forked a syrup-drenched bite of pancake into her mouth.

 

“It’s just— ah, never mind.” She shook her head as if deciding that she was being silly, finishing up cutting into her pancakes and placing the knife down. She picked up the bottle of syrup and released a careful amount across her food, careful to keep it away from her eggs.

 

“You’ve watched me have, what, three mental breakdowns over the past week?” Evelyn said through a mouthful of food before swallowing, “And you can’t tell me what’s going on?”

 

Helen laughed a bit, shrugging her shoulders and nodding as if conceding that Evelyn had a point.

 

“It’s silly,” she said.

 

“Try me.”

 

Helen met her eyes once more, and simply stared as if having an internal argument over whether or not she wanted to say what was on her mind. Eventually she made her decision, because the next words out of her mouth made Evelyn choke on the forkful of eggs she had bitten into.

 

“Is it weird that I feel like I’m cheating on Bob?”

 

A cough tore through her lungs, and her fist raised up to her mouth to prevent her food from flying across the counter. She coughed violently for several seconds, Helen’s shocked face turning into one of worry instantaneously.

 

Evelyn waved her back, “I’m fine,” she coughed again, “I’m fine!”

 

Helen stayed where she was per Evelyn’s frantic gestures for her to remain there, but that didn’t stop her from watching with wide eyes and that crease forming between her drawn eyebrows.

 

“Cheating,” Evelyn cleared her throat, “with me?”

 

“Well, yeah. I mean, he would never let me come here if he knew. And when you said ‘other life’— it made me think about those men with two families that don’t know about each other.”

 

Evelyn considered her words, feeling something flutter inside of her at being compared to a second family, but kept her face composed as she stared back at the woman across from her. She wiped a stray tear from the corner of her eye with the back of her hand, cursing her coughing fit, and reached for the glass of water Helen had demanded she take earlier.

 

“It’s not like we’re having some illicit affair,” she said before taking a large drink from the glass.

 

Helen’s cheeks bloomed with red. “Not technically, but I’m still sneaking around. With _you_.”

 

The emphasis on ‘you’ made Evelyn bite her lip and look down in shame. Knowing what she had learned from Helen’s digging earlier in the morning, she felt twice as terrible about her actions toward the Parr family. It was dawning on her how big of a risk it was for Helen to be around her.

 

“You don’t have to keep coming here,” she said. “I wouldn’t blame you if you changed your mind.” Evelyn knew that she was lying to Helen. There was no part of her alive that could stand to be abandoned by her now, not after realizing her own feelings. She would not only have to blame _someone_ for taking away the only thing that brought her joy anymore, but she could see herself spiraling into a drunken oblivion to keep her mind off of it all.

 

“Friends don’t abandon friends,” Helen said. “Besides, I actually like spending time with you.”

 

Evelyn set the glass back down on the table next to where Helen’s hand was resting. The urge to grab it took her off guard, and she carefully pulled her hands into her lap to keep herself behaved.

 

“I like spending time with you, too. I guess.” Her nonchalance was badly forced, purposefully so, and Helen’s laugh sounded like music dancing through the air.

 

When Helen left that afternoon, after drying the dishes that Evelyn washed, they stood at the door facing each other so much like every other day. Except this time, Evelyn felt different. She allowed herself to stand closer to Helen than usual, and the other woman seemed pleased with her newfound openness.

 

Evelyn had to look up a bit at Helen to meet her eyes, just barely, but enough to notice.

 

Helen held her arms out again as she had done earlier in the bathroom, and Evelyn sank into her embrace with far less trepidation than before. Feeling the thin, strong arms around her shoulders made her feel secure in a way that she could rarely achieve nowadays, even locked away in her home.

 

They pulled away from each other, but Helen’s arms remained around her. Evelyn was confused, but then Helen pressed her lips against her forehead, and something inside of her short-circuited.

 

“Take care of yourself, please,” she said as if she hadn’t just caused all of Evelyn’s brain to fry.

 

“Mmhm,” Evelyn hummed, eyes wide. If Helen noticed the effect she had on her, she didn’t say a word about it. She walked down the long, concrete stairway down the front of the estate, and Evelyn scolded herself for watching her leave. She shut the door with more force than necessary, turning all of the locks before pressing her back to the door and dropping her face into her hands.

  
“God _damn_ it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I strayed from cannon a /tiny/ bit by including Fironic on the list of supers killed by Syndrome, but the time frame (considering Gazerbeam's body was fully decomposed when Mr. Incredible found him) is close enough that it still works. 
> 
> If any of you have been keeping up with me on Tumblr, you're aware that there is more angst coming soon (shocker) but it's okay because at least you all have each other! 
> 
> Endless, endless thanks for the lovely comments left on the last chapter. Much love to all of you who've messaged me/sent me asks about how much you're enjoying the story. I can't say enough how happy y'all make me :')


	5. Good Riddance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After Evelyn spirals into a depressive episode upon learning about Fironic and Gazerbeam, Helen seeks to comfort.

There was no other word for it. Evelyn was depressed.

 

After Helen had left her home on Friday, she hadn’t been back the entire weekend. It was understandable. She had a family to be a part of, kids to raise— a husband to worry about while he was touring internationally.

 

This meant that for all of the magazines and newspapers, which she had burned through quicker than most would dream of, she had nothing to preoccupy her mind from the life-altering information Helen had given her a couple of days ago.

 

Scratch that.

 

She could have been designing the new Elasticycle.

 

But she was depressed. So, instead, she stayed curled in bed all day staring at the wall. It drew so much of a parallel to that forsaken book,  _ The Yellow Wallpaper _ , that she felt queasy. She couldn’t find the energy to drag herself out of bed. Every thought that crossed her mind about potentially doing something productive was met with a forlorn voice in her head that simply went,  _ I don’t feel like it _ .

 

The frustration that built inside of her at her own mind was overtaken by such fatigue that she ended up drifting in and out of sleep rather than seriously getting worked up. She heard the maid come in at one point, but was back under the spell of unconsciousness before she actually saw her.

 

Her maid also must have let Helen in because there was no way in hell the woman could have entered on her own without severe damage to the building.

 

“Evelyn?” Her gentle voice broke through her slumber, and her half-asleep mind let her smile like a complete dumbass when she heard her voice.

 

“Hmmm,” Evelyn hummed, curling into an even tighter ball and shoving her face deeper into the pillow. She felt a hand on her shoulder, lightly shaking her awake. A frown tugged at her eyebrows, and she inhaled deeply before forcing her eyes open. She turned her head a bit behind her and was greeted by kind brown eyes. Helen looked angelic sitting beside her on the edge of the bed, the morning sun shining through the window above Evelyn’s bed and highlighting her in radiant light. The sunlight cut halfway across Helen’s face, making the one eye exposed to it look hazel.

 

“Wha…?” Evelyn sleepily tried to ask.

 

“Your housekeeper let me in. She said you’ve been asleep since yesterday morning.” The concern in Helen’s voice was too serious to wave away with a joke, and she felt horrible for making her worry.

 

“I didn’t even realize,” she said blearily, voice thick with sleep.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

“Do I look okay?” Evelyn grumbled, turning her head back into the pillow to hide her face. God, she felt miserable.

 

“Sweetheart, what happened?” Helen’s sympathetic voice pierced through the fog in her brain, and some part of her knew that the term of endearment was the only reason it did. Helen’s hand was still lightly resting on her shoulder, rubbing her thumb up and down the exposed skin there. 

 

“Go away,” she said into the pillow. It’s like they took one step forward and lept back three.

 

“I’m not leaving you.” Helen’s voice said it was final, and Evelyn tried to make herself feel better by saying that at least she tried to get the other woman out of the way of her mood. Something about the declaration, though, just made her feel even more off balance than she already was.

 

“Why not?”

 

Helen was quiet for a moment, and Evelyn fought with everything in her not to sneak a look up at her face. Eventually, she heard the other woman sigh and say, “Because I care about you, and you can’t get rid of me that easily.”

 

Evelyn sighed right back and abruptly turned around beneath the covers until her back was no longer to Helen. She squinted up at her through the morning light and brought a hand up to block some of it out.

 

“Is this because of your parents?” Helen asked.

 

Evelyn scoffed, turning her gaze up to the ceiling and shaking her head. “God, which part of my parents?” She laughed humorlessly, “the part where they died that put me through depression and nightmares for years, or the part about knowing that they could both be alive right now if Syndrome wasn’t a psychopath?” She dropped her raised hand down to the bed beside her, and looked at Helen again.

 

“Or the anxiety they were so kind to give me as a child because they wanted Win and me to be  _ the best?” _ She threw quotes around the words. She tried not to fault them for the way she was in a perpetual state of turmoil, excessively worrying if her work was good enough— if  _ she  _ was good enough growing up. Her inability to ever get a good night’s sleep to this day. The constant agitation that she took out on Winston, who wanted nothing but to gain her approval as children. She tried not to fault them because they were dead, and they tried their best with what they knew. Learning what she had from Helen, though, dragged all of those old grievances right back up from her subconscious.

 

“I… don’t know what to say,” Helen said after a long stretch of silence.

 

“Of course not.” Evelyn threw her arm over her eyes to block out the sun, and laid motionless.

 

There was stillness for a long while, and Evelyn didn’t have the energy to worry over whatever it was Helen was thinking. She was unsure of how much time had passed, but then the bed was shifting, and a weight dipped down on the other side of her. She removed her arm from her face to see just what the hell was going on, and her stomach dropped when she saw Helen climbing into her bed after removing her shoes. Her face got hot, and she hoped to the heavens that Helen didn’t notice how inevitably red her cheeks and neck were.

 

Helen shifted her body until she was pressed against her side, tentatively laying her arm across Evelyn’s stomach. She could feel fire where Helen’s skin met the thin cloth of her camisole, and couldn’t tell which of them was burning up. Inside, Evelyn’s mind was ablaze with pure, white noise. Surely Helen felt her heart jackhammering inside of her ribcage, the question was if she was going to make a comment about it.

 

Except she said nothing, if she had noticed at all, and simply held her. While Evelyn was loathe to admit it, after the cacophony of sound inside of her mind and chest subsided, she actually did feel better. Helen’s soft floral scent was like a balm against the turmoil wrecking her brain, and she found herself being lulled back into a dreamless sleep with an ease that she hadn’t experienced in years.

 

When Evelyn awoke again, several hours must have passed. Helen, too, was asleep beside her— in front of her, rather. Apparently in their sleep, they had readjusted their positions. Evelyn’s head was tucked beneath Helen’s chin, her forehead resting against the other woman’s neck. Helen’s top arm was secured around the small of her back, and the one beneath her body was folded beneath the pillow under her head. Evelyn’s arms were tucked in between their torsos, and one of her hands had gripped onto Helen’s shirt in their slumber. She felt a brief panic rock through her at their proximity, but moving away would be more trouble than it was worth, and truthfully she wasn’t all that uncomfortable— if a bit overheated.

 

She closed her eyes again and allowed herself to simply be held by a woman that she was not allowed to have feelings for. Except, she did, and they ran themselves ragged through her every breath. She was free falling again, spiraling into an abyss of the unknown. She was unsure of Helen’s feelings about her, unsure of what lay ahead of them even if the romantic interest was returned seeing that she was in a committed marriage with her husband, and unsure of what she would do if she never gained the courage to at least tell Helen how she felt.

 

Unsure of what would become of them if the admission was met with disgust, or anger.

 

The thought of losing Helen now because she couldn’t keep her emotions in check made her feel sick.

 

Suddenly, in a panic, she tried to extract herself from the arm wrapped around her waist and was met with not just a firm resistance, but the tightening of the limb around her. She breathed out a near-silent laugh of amused defeat and resigned herself to being trapped.

 

Helen stirred eventually, her soft snores disappearing and being replaced by a change in breathing that signaled her consciousness. Evelyn kept her eyes closed, pretending to still be asleep, though she felt her heart nearly burst out of her chest in alarm. What would Helen’s reaction be to find herself in this position? 

 

Evelyn braced herself for the worst.

 

But it didn’t come. Helen’s body tensed slightly in surprise, but a near-silent chuckle rumbled through her chest before Evelyn felt her cheek nuzzle into the top of her head. The arm around her waist tightened even more, and a content sigh breezed over her hair. 

 

“You’ve got to take better care of yourself,” Helen whispered, seemingly to the air. The message was clearly for an unconscious Evelyn, and she felt that warmth residing deep inside of her stomach bloom until it reached her toes.

 

Evelyn debated saying something in response, and ultimately decided not to risk interrupting the moment.

 

“You sleepy girl,” Helen murmured before pressing her lips to the top of her head. Evelyn’s face suffused with heat, and it took every ounce of self control she had to not do something erratic like gasp, or have her heart explode from her chest. The way that it was pounding suggested that it was liable to do so at any second.

 

“Are you okay?” Helen asked.

 

Ice dropped down Evelyn’s veins as she realized that she may not have been as inconspicuously fake-asleep as she thought she was, and she slowly pulled her head back from where it was tucked against Helen’s collarbones to look up at her guiltily, with a face that was surely bright red.

 

“Yeah?” She said, though she couldn’t even have convinced herself that she sounded believable. Her voice cracked, for God’s sake.

 

Helen simply looked amused, though some other emotion was playing in her gaze that came across as indecisive. She stared at Evelyn for a moment, contemplating something, and then the hand on the small of her back started to pull away, and Evelyn reached back to grab it.

 

“Wait,” she breathed.

 

Helen looked as scared as Evelyn felt, and she slowly put her hand back where it was. There was a breath of space between the two of them, and they both looked deep into each other’s eyes like the other was afraid to be the first to look away. The ice running through Evelyn’s veins melted and was replaced with a slow flicker, like candle light, and then the world no longer felt so small and suffocating, but suddenly infinite.

 

She leaned forward, by a fraction of space, and gave Helen an opportunity to back away if she wanted to. Her heart thumped heavily in her chest with a speed that should have alarmed her. She could hardly hear her own breathing through the pounding in her ears, but she could feel that her breaths were ragged even though she was barely expelling them.

 

Helen’s eyes were tracking her face, as if checking and triple checking that this was what Evelyn truly was doing. The fear in her gaze raged with what was obviously longing, and after sensing that Helen was too afraid to move any closer, Evelyn decided herself.

 

She closed the last bit of space and pressed her lips, impossibly gentle, against Helen’s. A gasp racked through the other woman, but she pushed closer to Evelyn, fisting her shirt where her hand rested on her lower back. Every light in the house could have exploded for all Evelyn knew. That was how it felt in her brain, like the biggest star in the galaxy went supernova. She brought her hands up from between them to cup Helen’s jaw, and deepened the kiss like a woman starved for contact. Their lips worked together in perfect synchronization, seemingly quelling a thirst that had been building between them for all of this time. Helen’s other hand shifted until her arm slid beneath Evelyn’s neck so that she could tangle her fingers in her short, downy hair.

 

Inevitably, one of Evelyn’s hands began to wander, making its way down to Helen’s hip with a possessive grip. Then it moved to her thigh, which she jerked forward until the leg was slung around her own hip. A moan ripped through Helen’s lips, and broke the spell around them like a shattered glass.

 

The reality of what they had done set in violently, and Helen jerked away from her like she had been burned.

 

“ _ Stop _ , stop,” she said weakly. Her eyes were squeezed closed like she was solely focusing on trying to pull herself together as she stumbled out of the bed. The duvet halfway went with her.

 

Evelyn realized the severity, the weight of this one action, crush around her infinite space, and then she was right back in her small and suffocating universe. The voice in her head that made a habit of picking out all of her flaws whispered harshly that she was a  _ virus _ to Helen’s life. There was something sick inside of her, something that needed to be corrected, and she had spread it to the purest woman she could find. 

 

She willed the voice to shut up with every bit of energy she had left.

 

“Shit,” she said quietly, and then louder, “I am—  _ so  _ sorry.”

 

And then Helen’s eyes were wide open and the fear that had been in them before was amplified, drowning out whatever longing and attraction had made them sparkle as they had leading up to their kiss. 

 

When they began watering, Evelyn felt her heart break.

 

“No, wait, Helen… Don’t do that.” She was panicking. There was nothing inside of her that knew what to do in this situation that wouldn’t make things worse, but she forced herself up to her knees and shuffled across the queen sized bed until she was kneeling on the edge of it in front of Helen’s paralyzed figure.

 

“It didn’t—“ she swallowed the lump in her own throat, “It didn’t have to mean anything. I won’t tell anyone. It won’t happen again, okay? It didn’t have to mean  _ anything _ at all.” Her words were rushed, but she hoped beyond anything that she at least sounded calm enough to not exacerbate Helen’s meltdown.

 

“ _ Bob, _ ” Helen whispered in anguish, fisting the mussed bedspread into her hands and dropping her head down in devastation until her face was entirely hidden. Evelyn wanted so badly to reach out and touch her, to comfort her somehow, but she was smart enough to know that the best thing she could do for Helen was to give her space. She sat back on her heels and watched the other woman in defeat.

 

“You don’t have to tell him—“

 

“I can’t keep lying to my husband!” Helen exploded, head shooting up quicker than Evelyn could blink. There was an inferno behind her watery brown eyes that Evelyn had never seen before, a fiery fury that could have destroyed the entire mansion if it wanted to. Evelyn jerked backward, catching her balance with one hand shooting out behind her.

 

“You—“ Helen looked like she was in a downward spiral, free falling as Evelyn had been since that damned day in the plane. “You did this! You did this to my marriage, to my  _ family _ — it was you! I should have  _ never _ —“ she cut herself off before she could finish, but Evelyn knew what she was going to say next.

 

_ I should have never come to see you. _

 

The stinging behind Evelyn’s eyes felt too sharp, and the was overcome with a sudden horror of the tears falling down her cheeks. She reached up immediately to wipe them away with the back of her hand, and her first defense mechanism against the hurt blossoming through her chest was anger.

 

“I didn’t do  _ shit _ that you didn’t want, too! If you regret being here so much then just fucking leave, see if I care!” She yelled back, yanking the duvet back into position with a bit too much force and ending up with too much on the opposite end of the bed. She threw it back and got underneath it like she had been before, turning her back on the other woman and shutting her eyes against the warm liquid defiantly streaming from there.

 

“You know your way out,” she muttered coldly.

 

The room was deafeningly silent for a long while, and Evelyn could feel nothing but her heart in her throat. The hollowness of the rest of her seemed painfully familiar, and she resigned herself to wallow in it for the foreseeable future. After an indeterminable amount of time, she heard footsteps carry Helen’s body out of her room.

 

And probably out of her life.

 

She told herself it was good riddance. 

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Out of the ones written already, this chapter is one of my favorites. I am awaiting the outcries and accepting them as they come because I have had this chapter written for a week now and have been bracing myself for it this entire time lmfao.
> 
> Much love, and don't worry. It's called a slow burn for a reason :)
> 
> (PS: those of you who have commented in the past begging for the first kiss to come made me laugh because if only you had known lmfao sorry love ya!)


	6. Under the Prison

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn copes with the aftermath of Helen's departure, and gets a new visitor.

Evelyn knew that she was getting bad because she hadn’t slept in over two days. 

 

Things tended to work in extremes for her. Either she slept days away entirely, or not at all.

 

Her dining room had become a graveyard for all of her discarded ideas, balled up pieces of paper littering the floor and the table in piles. Nothing that she could design was good enough, and it didn’t help that she wasn’t allowed to construct any type of device to even test her theories and concepts out. She had sat hunched over the table for nearly 50 hours, eyes bloodshot and sore from being active for so long, drawing sweeping lines and arching curves that ultimately ended up on the floor with everything else. In between those hours she may have remembered to feed herself a pack of crackers from the pantry. And bathroom breaks, of course.

 

Her drink of choice was in her left hand now, her right one scribbling furiously at yet another sheet. She gripped the neck of the third wine bottle she had gone through in the past two days and brought the opening to her lips. The liquid sent a calming warmth down her chest, and she could barely remember what it was like to be sober. Maybe her designs were getting worse because her head was so goddamn woozy.

 

“ _ Fuck _ ,” she cursed loudly. The sound bounced off of the walls and the high ceiling, and no one was around to scold her for yelling, so she said it again, louder. “ _ Fuck _ !” She crumpled the new piece she was working on and threw it against the wall with all of the energy that she could muster— unfortunately, it wasn’t much. She brought the bottle back to her lips and took a long swig again before stumbling out of the dining room chair and shuffling her feet across the hardwood to take her past the living room and into her bedroom.

 

She couldn’t stand to sit in her living room anymore. It reminded her too much of—

 

_ Fuck her _ , she thought with no real anger behind it, and made it into her bedroom with a head that felt like it had only ever existed in a cloud. She sat the bottle down on her nightstand more aggressively than she meant to, not knowing where the cork was for the life of her, and fell face first into the bed. With her eyes closed, the room pitched and spun around her in a dizzying dance.

 

She missed her so much that her  _ body _ hurt.

 

Anger aimed at herself erupted there, spiking upward in her blood until her breaths shook. She needed to see her, at least to make sure that she was okay. The look in her eyes before Evelyn had turned her back on her had haunted the backs of her eyelids every second since it happened. 

 

Why did she have to go and ruin everything?

 

“You’re so  _ stupid _ ,” she muttered into the duvet. She held her face there until her brain overrode her core desire to suffocate and forced her head up. She slowly rolled over onto her back and stared up at that damned plain white ceiling. She really was going to lose her mind in this house. It had been two weeks since she had seen Helen. She spent the first week and a half sleeping her pain away.

 

Because it couldn’t hurt if she was unconscious, right? 

 

But then the insomnia set in like a kick to the face, and she was partially into day three of it. Fifty hours strong. She hated the sunlight that was pouring in from over her bed, and jerked herself up to her feet, wobbling a bit, before steadying herself and walking over to the curtains. She yanked them closed with an aggressive fist, and the room was bathed in darkness. Not bothering with the bed, she lowered herself right down the wall and onto the floor, her legs splayed out in front of her. She reached her arm up to grab the bottle of wine off of the nightstand and missed it, grazing it enough with the tip of her fingers that it fell off of the nightstand and spilled all over her previously pristine beige carpet. 

 

She watched with a detached gaze as the deep red stain grew and shook her head slowly in disbelief, a sort of crazed laugh falling from her lips as she pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Her forehead burrowed into where her knees were pushed together and she simply sat there. 

 

Something in the back of her mind kept tugging at her consciousness, that malicious little voice that made her want to take her own head off if only for it to stop talking. It was the voice that tormented her ever since she was younger, when her problems were much smaller than they were now, but she hadn’t known that then. It was the one that told her how utterly worthless she was, how much of a burden she was being to the people around her. It now went on incessantly about how she had single-handedly driven Helen away. It said that it was her perverted, homosexual tendencies that had scared the other woman away for good. Not to mention making an advance on a married woman? One with superpowers, no less, who was legally bound to a man who could crush her skull between his fingers.

 

A part of her wished that he would, if only to put her out of her misery.

 

She began to think that the wine was making her histrionic.

 

That fleeting thought about _Bob Parr_ turned into a slew of them attacking her in her drunken state. She disliked him in a way that was hard to really even put her back into. It was a superficial dislike. She was sure he was a great man— why else would Helen have ever given him the time of day— but he _had_ _her_. He got to hold Helen in his arms and kiss her bad days away. He was the one she went to for comfort, love and partnership. Sure, she’d had Helen during the day. Their little secret meetings were rejuvenating and thrilling, all of that.

 

At the end of the day though, Helen was always his. He always won as long as that was true, and the poor man had no idea he was even in a competition.

 

Evelyn scoffed at herself. There was no competition. He had already claimed the most coveted prize of all before she had even been on Helen’s radar.

 

She wondered if Helen told him about their kiss. She tried to imagine his reaction, and tried even harder to derive joy from him knowing that she had kissed his wife.

 

She couldn’t though. All she saw, instead, was the idea of Helen’s teary-eyed face as she called Bob all the way in South America to force the hard truth out. All she saw was him yelling at her over the phone, maybe. Perhaps he got so furious he crushed the device between his fingers. Evelyn whimpered into her knees and drew them tighter to her chest. What had she done?

 

She lifted her head up from where it was hidden and couldn’t even be shocked at how much larger the wine stain had grown. All of the energy was zapped from her body, and so she could only sit there and watch it get absorbed into the fibers of the flooring. Not a muscle moved.

 

Her doorbell jolted through her like lightning, making every hair on her arms and neck stand straight up. Her heart jumped into her throat, terrified of the very likely possibility— well, not so likely anymore— that it was Helen. 

 

Here she was, drunk and depressed, sitting in the same clothes she had not changed out of in the past four days. Her hair was messy, badly needing a trim that she didn’t want to resort to giving herself. She spared one last disappointed glance at the fallen wine and pushed her way up to her feet with medium difficulty. Her vision was wobbly, and her balance faded in and out of effectiveness as she stumbled toward the front door. One foot over the next, over and over again, she told herself.

 

She heaved a deep breath before she opened the door, steeling herself for whatever was on the other side of it, and swung the wooden barrier open.

 

There stood Winston, guilty and tall, on her doorstep. She wanted to be angry with him for abandoning her for so long. She wanted to be angry with him for not coming to check on her sooner. Yet, she saw how hard the separation had been in his face, and honestly she was too drunk, and missed her baby brother too much, to give him hell for any of it. She found herself with her arms wrapped tightly around his torso, face crumpling into anguish as it only ever could around family when you’re drunk and you’ve been trying to hold it together for too long.

 

His arms had raised out of the way in surprise, likely expecting a verbal lashing, but when it didn’t come he slowly lowered them back down and rubbed her back as if he had not been anticipating  _ this _ upon entry to her home. 

 

“Eve? What… happened?” His familiar voice felt like returning home after an entire summer away, and she felt the tears flow freely into his pressed blue dress shirt.

 

“I can’t do this,” she lamented into his chest, “I’m going… fuckin’ insane in this house, Win!” Her slurred words were muffled even further by his clothing.

 

He pulled away to look at her face, the shock likely directed toward her uncharacteristic breakdown showing brightly in his gaze. “The judge said 180 days…” he said, as if that was supposed to make her feel better. She felt a scowl overtake her face and the back of her hand shot up to wipe the offending tears from her cheeks.

 

“I know what the  _ goddamn _ judge said, Wins _ ton _ ,” she said his name like a mockery, “I don’t care! Get me  _ out of here _ ,” she begged through her teeth, searching his face for any hint of sympathy. There was some, but not enough for him to help her.

 

“I truly am sorry…but you did this to yourself, Evie. My hands are tied here. House arrest was the best deal you could have gotten. You know that.” He genuinely seemed to feel remorseful for her situation, but knowing that there was nothing that he could do— nothing that he was  _ willing  _ to do— made the fight drain out of her as quickly as it had sparked. So much for family.

“You should be thanking God that you aren’t  _ under _ the prison for what you did,” Winston said.

 

A fleeting thought that she would rather be buried beneath the prison skipped through her head and left before she could ruminate over it.

 

Her posture slumped a bit, making her drop her arms from where they had surrounded him, and she hung her head down like a woman condemned. “No one died,” she muttered under her breath. Winston ignored her and gripped her cheeks in between his palms, tilting her heavy-eyed gaze upward.

 

“Have you not been sleeping again?”

 

She jerked her face out of his grasp, keeping her head tilted down and away so that he wouldn’t be able to analyze her anymore.

 

“What d’you care?” She asked him, petulantly.

 

“You’re my sister and I love you. Despite what you did…” he paused as his lips pursed in disappointment, “we’re all the other has. I just want what’s best for you.”

 

She forgot her mission to avoid eye contact and glared up at him, “If y’wanted the best for me, I’d be three,” she held up three fingers and pushed the tips of them against his chest, “margaritas deep on the beach of an island right now,” she slurred.

 

“Law is law, big sister.” The little purse-lipped smile on his face was sad, yet still condescending enough to tell her that he believed she deserved this. She conceded that he was right, yes she did deserve everything she was getting right now, but this kind of condemnation from her only family… well, she could hardly stand it.

 

“That’s not what you fuckin’ said when Supers were illegal,” she shot back.

 

“That is entirely different!” His voice raised not in anger, but in unbridled passion, and she rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. She figured that she should tell him about the Supers that were killed. Gazerbeam and Fironic.

 

A sick, vindictive, and drunk part of her wanted to keep it to herself, though. If Winston was no help to her, his own flesh and blood, why would she tell him anything? The other part that agreed, though for different reasons, simply said that it would be insensitive for her to have such a conversation with him while she was as drunk as she was. That voice was much smaller, drowned out mostly by the alcohol in her bloodstream, but it was just loud enough for her to hear it.

 

“Listen, I know that you’re going through a rough time, and I know you’ve had issues with your… um… hysteria in the past. And the drinking.”

 

Evelyn almost began tuning him out, agitated to high heavens by people who continued to call her debilitating depression and anxiety “hysteria”. She had studied the brain more than she initially anticipated for many of her inventions, and continuously told him that there was an altered chemical production there that caused an imbalance. Winston was just fond of calling it what their parents had said it was when she was a teenager.

 

“But I think that staying here and getting away from all the stress of the outside world should be good for your rehabilitation! You could pick up a new hobby, start a garden— you could start meditating!”

 

A stupidly bright mental image of herself kneeled over a garden of flowers, dirt on her knees and hands, and a wide brimmed sun-hat keeping the sun out of her face popped into her hazy mind. She saw herself with a yoga mat out in the backyard over the grass, meditating to the sound of nature around her. Birds chirped and water from her outdoor fountain bubbled in the brief daydream. Something volatile rumbled inside of her chest as she realized that Helen was nowhere to be found in those mental images, and imaginary-her was okay with that. That’s how she knew it was all bullshit.

 

“Good God, shut  _ up  _ Win!” She began stepping forward, moving him closer and closer to the open doorway until he was back outside. She had missed her brother, yes, but if he was going to be this insufferable she rathered that he didn’t visit at all.

 

“What?” He genuinely looked confused, and Evelyn thought that was the worst part.

 

“Please, just go,” she sighed defeatedly, slumping her shoulders down and suddenly feeling a hollow sadness in her chest that said it was time for a 15 hour nap.

 

“Are you sure?” He asked, and that little wrinkle between his eyebrows appeared, deep and concerned. Evelyn felt bad, but this was for the best. If he stayed any longer, there was no telling what she was liable to do or say to him. Whatever it was might be so bad that he really _wouldn’t_ come see her again. She couldn’t live with being the reason for yet another person she lo— _cared_ _about_ — disappearing from her life.

 

“Yeah,” she sighed.

 

He watched her for a moment, contemplating whether or not he wanted to leave her alone probably, and leaned down to kiss her forehead before retreating.

 

“I’ll see you again soon, okay? Take better care of yourself, or I won’t be leaving so easily next time! I’m trusting you to get yourself together, Evie! You’ve done it before!” He called back as he left down the front stairs.

 

She could barely muster a wave back as she closed the door and locked it behind him, dropping her forehead down onto the wood and closing her eyes. A deep sigh wracked through her, and then she was shuffling back to her room much more sober than she had been when she left it. She carried herself to her queen sized bed and crawled beneath the duvet with a frown marring her face. 

 

_ You’ve done it before _ . She scoffed quietly. This was so much different.

 

The darkness of the room paired with the stifling nature of the blanket over her head somehow gave her the comfort of nothingness.

 

And for this moment now, at least, she could pretend that she was nothing, was nowhere, at all.  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> First of all, I'm sorry for all of the hearts that got broken in the last chapter hahaha. I will say that the artwork and fic inspiration (and even one amazing playlist) that have come from this story is genuinely mind-blowing. I appreciate all of you guys' support and love with everything in me.
> 
> This chapter was a bit of a filler, mostly to give everyone a view of Evelyn's headspace during the passage of time. 
> 
> [IMPORTANT: Updates are on TUESDAYS and FRIDAYS]


	7. Coming Clean

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen makes a return with some upsetting news, and Evelyn makes a tough decision for the both of them.

It was nearing a month since Evelyn had last seen Helen, and subjectively, she was doing better. 

 

She had woken up from her depression nap that morning with an idea that wouldn’t leave her alone. Like a house phone, but one that could be used portably with a range that spanned the entire country. An intrigued frown had taken over her face at the thought, mentally envisioning a device large enough to hold the tech needed to be able to connect to other phones far more than just a few miles away, but also small enough to carry around comfortably.

 

She imagined that the idea was her subconscious yelling about how lonely she was becoming, but like all of her other upsetting thoughts, it was silenced by the arching movements of her hand and pencil over the paper. An entire wall of the scribbled-on sheets as high as she could reach were tacked up through the paint with concepts and visuals written and drawn out. She had no idea how long she had sat in her dining room mapping out the theoretical operation of the steps involved to execute the transmission of a phone call mobily. 

 

“...wouldn’t be transmitted by cable… so by Hertzian waves… but what algorithm?” She muttered to herself, pencil flying across the paper. 

 

She hadn’t realized that her face was pinched in concentration until she heard two hesitant knocks at the front door. They were so faint that she thought she had simply imagined them until two more followed behind them with more confidence. In the dining room, Evelyn couldn’t see out of the giant window at the front of the house like she could in the living area, and so the question of who it was remained in the air as she contemplated ignoring it all together.

 

She was focused. Distracted.

 

She kept writing.

 

Her doorbell rang, and it startled her so much that her hand jerked. She stared down at the erratic line that had sprung from her unintentional movement and sighed with slumped shoulders as she dragged herself up out of the chair. She looked around at all of the discarded balls of paper around her and couldn’t even find it in herself to be angry with the mess she’d made. Her walk to the front door was leisurely, not a sense of urgency in her steps for the life of her. She didn’t bother peering through the huge window to see whose car was in the drive, but instead she stared blankly ahead as she made her way to the entrance.

 

The knob turned beneath her hand easily, and when the mahogany door swung open, she couldn’t reach deep enough down in her emotions to even find shock.

 

Helen stood on the other side, halfway turned around as if she were on the verge of leaving that very second, and whipped back around to face Evelyn as soon as the door was open. The look in her eyes was unreadable, but only because there were too many emotions there to decipher at once.

 

“Hi,” she breathed out. The relief in that one word should have touched something in Evelyn. She thought that maybe it had, and she simply couldn’t feel it.

 

“Hi.” She made no move to get out of the doorway.

 

“Can I come in?” Helen asked softly, and the brown of her eyes was just as genuine as before, if not more remorseful. There was a look in them that spoke to something greater, some weight on her chest that made her more grave than she had been before. The bags under her eyes were only noticeable up close, and her hands fidgeted nervously on either side of her.

 

Evelyn dragged her eyes up from where they had been watching Helen’s hands pick at the sides of her slacks and nodded eventually, taking several steps backward and allowing her to enter. She closed the door behind the hero and locked it. Moving further into the room, she stood next to the couch with her arms crossed, facing Helen with a blank expression and waiting patiently.

 

Helen took another step toward her, and Evelyn automatically took a step back that caused a flash of hurt to appear across Helen’s face. Evelyn hadn’t deliberately meant to do so, but she wasn’t above whatever self preservation was telling her to keep her distance.

 

“I wanted to apologize to you,” Helen started, “for leaving like I said I wouldn’t. There was a lot happening in the background that you never knew about…” she paused, not taking her eyes off of Evelyn’s the entire time, “but I should have just been honest with you. You deserved that much from me.”

 

Evelyn wanted to snort and say,  _ Did I really? _

 

She refrained.

 

“So I’m going to come clean right now, and just hope that you’ll hear me out.”

 

Helen held her hands in front of her stomach, clasped together as she seemed to be trying to find her words.

 

“When I left, the first thing that I did when I got home was call Bob.” She gripped her index finger between the ones on her other hand and stretched it out like a piece of rubber before allowing it to return to place and stretched it out again. Probably a nervous tick. That was new, Evelyn observed.

 

“I needed to come clean to my husband… I thought our marriage was going to suffer when he got back, and I couldn’t bear to keep lying to him. I told him everything.” She looked up from her fingers to Evelyn’s eyes as she said so, like she was waiting for a reaction.

 

There was none. Evelyn felt the hollow thud of her heart in her chest, and nothing else.

 

“He was angry for a while, and yelled, not at me, but at the situation. He was worried, you know? Anyway, he said he was going to call one of his connections and find me a therapist in the city, and get me all ‘sorted out’.” Helen took a deep breath and looked down at the floor with a frown scrunching her face.

 

“And like a good wife, I went to therapy. Three times a week, I sat with Dr. Anderson. He asked me if I’d had any tendencies toward…  homosexuality before… and I said no.” It was getting harder to watch Helen speak, seeing the way that she began to struggle to get the words out. She kept stretching her finger quicker and quicker, the nervous energy pouring out of her and making Evelyn’s anxiety rise.

 

“And he promised… that he was going to fix me, so that I could go back to being a good wife. A good mother.” Her eyes flicked back up to meet Evelyn’s, and something deep and sad swam there.

 

“And the more I went to see him, the more I thought that I was… beyond repair, I guess, because he didn’t know how it was possible that I was both attracted to my husband and to you.” The admission weighed in the air between them like a heavy blanket, settling over everything in the room and taking residence in Evelyn’s bones.

 

Helen was attracted to her. Not disgusted. That hollow beating in Evelyn’s chest sped up on its own accord. Her heart may have been hopeful, but she couldn’t afford to be.

 

“Anyway, he started the aversion therapy. He’d show me slides of women dressed in barely any clothes, and connect this IV to my arm that made me,” she shuddered, “it made me  _ sick _ . I don’t remember what he said was in it.”

 

Evelyn’s fists clenched atop her crossed arms, and something primal inside of her wanted to say to hell with the legal terms of her house arrest and track this man down herself. The rage that had been dormant for so long inside of her bubbled slowly as she listened.

 

“We only got through a few sessions of that before he realized it wasn’t working. Before  _ I  _ realized it wasn’t working….” she said, “I stopped going. I’m supposed to be there right now, but I was thinking about what kind of world we have to live in where what I feel about you warrants— _ that _ ,” she trailed off.

 

Evelyn felt something inside of her expand, warming all the way from her stomach to her toes. It was painful how hopeful she was despite herself, how much she wanted to reach out and hold the woman in front of her. She ached for her like the starving ached for sustenance, and the very core of her being knew that she would kiss her again in a second regardless of the consequences if it would just make that look of pain on her face go away.

 

“And Bob couldn’t have known what Dr. Anderson was going to do to me, how could he have? But when I called and told him—“ Helen took a breath, “he said that sometimes you have to hurt before things get better. That all of that was for the best. I know he only thinks that because he doesn’t understand, but—“ she paused haltingly. 

 

“So I’m going to listen to  _ my _ gut again, since it’s the only thing out there with my best interest in mind. Which is why I’m here.”

 

She finished talking and dropped her hands down to her sides, palms facing forward like she was offering herself up. As if she were saying ‘This is all I have to give you, take it or leave it’.

 

And Evelyn would take everything she had to give even if it killed her.

 

She closed the distance between them in two strides and cupped Helen’s jaw between her hands, feeling the soft warmth of the skin there before their lips connected like colliding stars. Helen’s startled noise relaxed into a soft hum into her mouth, and her arms settled around her waist comfortably. Evelyn kissed her with all of the pain, fear and loss she had felt over the past month, and Helen returned it all just as desperately.

 

Somewhere in the kiss, one of them had started crying if the dampness on Evelyn’s face was any indication. She nipped at Helen’s bottom lip and drew a smile out of her, which she in turn chuckled into her mouth in response to. They pulled away from each other slowly, keeping their hands where they were.

 

“I missed you,” Evelyn admitted quietly, brushing her thumb across the dampness on Helen’s cheek. She felt strange saying those words, and she couldn’t place why. They seemed too intimate in their truth, maybe.

 

“It was so hard to stay away,” Helen admitted with red tinting her cheeks to hint at her own forwardness. “I’m sorry about what I said when—“

 

“Shut up,” Evelyn said, pressing her lips to Helen’s once more before pulling back. “I don’t blame you. I mean, I did almost kill you once. I think you can forgive yourself for yelling at me.” 

 

She hadn’t cracked a joke since Helen had last been around, and she forgot how great it felt to make her laugh. Helen pressed their foreheads together and those wide eyes fluttered closed in content.

 

“Still, I felt awful— still do. About everything. Even betraying Bob like this again is tearing me apart, but if I never got to kiss you again—“ she broke off abruptly, her closed eyes squeezing even more tightly closed, “I don’t think I ever would’ve forgiven myself.”

 

Evelyn’s heart broke to hear her be so torn, to see this woman that she cared for so deeply compromising her morals for her. Yet, she was selfish. The feelings that she had for Helen were untamable, wreaking havoc through her every thought and breath. She wanted to be able to let Helen go for her sake, but she could never be so altruistic. Could she?

 

All she could say was, “Thanks for coming back.”

 

And Helen tilted her head to press her lips against her cheek, as softly as a feather might brush past.

 

“I don’t think I could have stayed away if I wanted to.”

 

They parted eventually when Evelyn broke their embrace with an embarrassed comment about needing to go take a shower. While she was in the bathroom, scrubbing shampoo through her outgrown hair, she contemplated the turn of events. Things were changing so quickly that she reminded herself that other things were still the same.

 

For example, Helen was still married. She still had three kids. Homosexuality was still considered a mental illness. Helen would never leave Bob or her kids, not that Evelyn would ever want her to leave the latter— and she didn’t particularly want her to leave Bob either. What kind of life could she and Helen have that wasn’t shrouded in secrecy and lies? She couldn’t ask her to walk away from her husband and tear her family apart. She cared about her too much to even consider it. It would break the hero’s too-big heart.

 

What else was the same? She was still on house arrest. She still was an enemy to Helen’s family. 

 

What was different, though? So much.

 

Helen admitted her feelings for her. They kissed again. Evelyn was  _ happy _ for once. 

 

When she exited the shower in her favorite silk robe that felt far too dramatic in her present company, hair still damp and occasionally dripping on her shoulders, Helen was perusing the dining room wall. An absurd amount of space was filled with tacked pieces of paper filled to the corners with her long-hand equations and sketches. Helen’s back was to her, so Evelyn couldn’t read the expression on her face, but the way that she tilted her head to the side in an effort to read one particular sheet that was nothing but numbers and symbols as if she had any idea what it meant made her smile.

 

“So, I was thinking,” Evelyn said.

 

Helen turned her upper body around to look behind her shoulder, feet still planted facing the wall. The half smile on her face was amused. “With that brain of yours? Should I be worried?” 

 

Evelyn felt a small laugh come on, but it never fully made its way out. Her mirth was immediately dampened by what she was about to say next.

 

“I was thinking about you,” she sighed, and the words were getting stuck in her throat. They gripped onto every surface trying to stop themselves from getting out.

 

“You and Bob… and your kids. Your  _ life _ ,” she gritted out.

 

Helen’s face morphed into an expression of concern as it tended to around her, brows furrowed and that little wrinkle appearing between them. She turned around completely and stepped around the dining room table to give Evelyn all of her attention, avoiding balls of paper along the way.

 

“Why do I think I know where you’re going with this?”

 

Evelyn crossed her arms across her chest, turning her shoulders inward as she shrugged them. Her head dipped down a bit, and she looked at Helen through her eyelashes. The other part of herself would have throttled her right now for continuing to say what she did next.

 

“Because you know I’m right. You know what happens down the line if we do this. And you’re gonna  _ hate _ yourself for it... you’re gonna hate  _ me _ for it.” She watched Helen’s eyes soften and her shoulders slump in defeat. All of the fight that she may have put up had drained out of her before it could even come to light.

 

“What am I supposed to do?” Helen asked. She pushed her hand through her hair and held it at the top of her head, squeezing in a rare display of stress. She began pacing in front of Evelyn’s closed off body, staring off into space as she did. She nearly stepped on one of the many discarded balls of crumpled paper on the floor and gently pushed it aside with her foot.

 

“Bob doesn’t even recognize what I did as cheating—” she stopped at the word like it had physically dealt her a blow, and the breath rushed from her lungs in a single gust. She shook her head quickly and continued, “He thinks that this is some illness I need to get through, and once upon a time I would have agreed with him, but I know what I feel!” She stopped pacing suddenly and whirled to look dead at Evelyn. Her eyes were wide, pleading for the other woman to understand. She looked distressed, held under siege by her own feelings.

 

Evelyn didn’t know what to say, and so she watched as Helen’s gaze slowly faded out of focus again as something else occurred to her.

 

“How can I even look him in the eyes when he gets back?” She asked in a whisper, the hand in her hair slowly dropping down her face until her fingers rested over her mouth. 

 

Evelyn’s lips parted, but no words came out of her mouth. She felt trapped, like she had opened something inevitable, but still panicked about having been the one to put it into motion first.

 

“How can I keep looking at my  _ kids _ —” Helen gasped, and then her eyes were brimming with tears almost instantaneously. Evelyn’s arms dropped from her chest, and she was striding forward until she was almost a breath away from her.

 

After a slight moment of hesitation, she reached one hand up and pulled Helen’s hand from over her mouth, intertwining their fingers and tilting her head until Helen was forced to make eye contact with her.

 

“Look at me,” she said, “you have no idea how badly I want this. But maybe…” she closed her eyes and pursed her lips together, “maybe we stick to being… friends.”

 

The words were acidic on her tongue, and everything in her recoiled from the inevitable torture of pretending to only have something platonic with Helen Parr. Yet, the teary eyes that stared back at her, wide and shocked, were all of the convincing that she needed. Her heart felt too heavy in her chest, but she knew that she  _ couldn’t _ be selfish as she originally thought. Not after all of the selfless things that Helen had done for her. She couldn’t jeopardize the hero’s life for her own self-serving desires. She cared about Helen too much to do that to her.

 

The last thing that she wanted was to be the reason why Helen was miserable around the people she loved the most on this planet. 

 

She reached their joined hands up and extended her thumb to wipe a fallen tear from Helen’s cheek. The other woman stared back at her for a long moment before a watery smile took over her lips. The bottom one trembled as she spoke.

 

“I never would have expected that of you.”

 

Evelyn laughed, but the sadness in it severely altered the sound. “Trust me, I have never hated myself more than right now.”

 

Helen pressed her lips to her forehead, lingering there much longer than last time. 

 

“Don’t talk about my best friend that way ever again,” she tried to joke, pulling away.

 

“Your best friend is an idiot,” Evelyn said. Helen looked at her, those deep brown eyes seeming to memorize every pore on her face, and she suddenly felt too exposed. She took a step backward, keeping their hands interlocked.

 

“So… just friends?” Helen asked quietly.

 

“Yeah. Whatever the hell that means.”

 

Helen cracked a smile that was sad around the edges, and Evelyn wondered when she would ever be able to make that undertone of sorrow disappear. “Wanna play chess… pal?” 

 

Evelyn cringed, a laugh unexpectedly bubbling up from her lips at the intentional awkwardness of the question. “You mean do I wanna destroy you in a game of chess? Absolutely. I can’t believe you had to ask.”

 

“Alright, mastermind. Let’s leave the arrogance in here while we go set up the board,” Helen said, leading her by their hands into the living room. 

 

“You know exactly how this game is going to end,” Evelyn chuckled.

 

“Doesn’t mean I won’t have fun, does it?” Helen asked, turning her head back to look at Evelyn over her shoulder as she marched them into the adjoining room. 

 

And Helen was right, they did have fun. And they were ‘just friends,’ yes, but she was still happy as long as she was with her.

 

Hopefully that would be enough.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know it's not Tuesday, but I was feeling generous last night and decided that you all deserved an update today. (Yes, you will still be getting a chapter on Tuesday, don't worry)
> 
> Thanks again to all of you for being so wonderful, I truly can't describe how great y'all are <3


	8. Twenty Three

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Helen and Evelyn try to go back to how things were before they confessed their feelings for each other, and it almost works.

Helen visited again two days later.

 

Evelyn, while not buried under the boulder of depression she had been over the past month, still maintained a level of it that prevented her from taking proper care of herself.

 

She would wake up at odd hours of the morning and get lost in an idea for an invention. After cursing the air and the device around her ankle for the thousandth time at being the reason why she was unable to bring any of these ideas to life, she would settle down on the floor of her living room to sketch new things out. The wall of ideas in the dining room had spread to two now. She still forgot to eat most times.

 

She had been trying not to think about what she had done two days go. She couldn’t believe herself.

 

Evelyn had spent almost an entire month in a fog of self loathing and her inability to keep a healthy sleeping schedule, perpetually in a drunken stupor over learning the truth behind what could have saved her parents and being abandoned by Helen after that kiss.

 

Then, presented with the opportunity to have the very woman who occupied nearly every waking thought that was not momentarily fended off by the pencil between her fingers, she squandered it.

 

Squandered, though, implies that she did so for nothing. She felt herself sigh, and continued drawing lines on the sheet of paper as she tried to stop thinking about it.

 

Helen wouldn’t have forgiven her had things progressed as they were going to. And Evelyn, with good conscience, could never have torn her away from her family. What kind of monster would that have truly made her, if she still wasn’t one after what she had done to that family to begin with?

 

“Shut the fuck up,” she murmured angrily to her mind.

 

Realizing that she just spoke to herself aloud made her hand stop moving across the paper entirely as her eyes rolled up to the ceiling.

 

_If I actually lose my mind in this house…_ she thought.

 

She could just be friends with Helen, she told herself.

 

She could put her feelings aside for the greater good of their relationship because it was better to be together platonically and internally suffer through her feelings for Helen than to be nothing at all. She had survived much worse. This could work.

 

It had to.

 

So when Helen knocked those four familiar knocks, Evelyn opened the door and gave her a hug that was brief and appropriate.

 

“Hey, buddy!” She said, deliberately making fun of how exaggerated their friendship had to be in order to be taken as such. Helen laughed, throwing her head back before looking into Evelyn’s eyes with a depth that did not belong to people who were merely friendly with each other.

 

“Cut it out,” Helen said around a grin.

 

Evelyn stepped back from the door so that Helen could enter, and she found herself sitting back in her spot on the fluffy purple rug in the center of the living room. The other woman locked up before she fully made her way inside, pushing the sleeves of her black turtleneck up to her elbows.

 

“Isn’t it a little warm outside for that?” Evelyn asked, folding her legs and propping her elbows on her knees.

 

Helen visibly blushed, casting her gaze down toward her feet like a child caught in the act of something against the rules. Her hands folded behind her back and she huffed a breath out through her mouth as she peered back up at Evelyn guilty.

 

“I thought… I don’t know… I thought it would make things easier?”

 

Evelyn was confused for a beat, eyes squinting up at her friend before they went round with understanding. A raspy laugh bubbled up from her chest and she threw her head back, hands gripping onto her knees for support as she partially rocked backward.

 

“You thought that a _turtleneck_ was going to curb my homosexual tendencies?” Evelyn’s laughter went on for a bit longer while Helen’s face continued to beam red.

 

“Alright, _very_ funny,” Helen said sarcastically, crossing the room and dropping down in front of Evelyn with her legs crossed out in front of her.

 

“Oh, Helen… I’d be attracted to you in a trash bag,” Evelyn said with a sigh coming down from her bout of mirth. It felt freeing to be able to say the things that had always been kept at bay by her own fear of herself. Her own fear of what Helen’s response would be if she ever voiced the thoughts she kept so repressed.

 

But they were only supposed to be friends, Evelyn reminded herself, so she said, “But so would _Mr. Incredible,_ and I’m at least eighty percent sure he would win in _that_ fight. So for my own sake, I’ll change my response and say you would look _awful_ in a trash bag. Utterly terrible,” she smirked.

 

“Coming from someone as fashionable as yourself, I have a hard time believing you would ever find me attractive in a garbage bag,” Helen chuckled. The conversation was absurd, and yet Evelyn found that the smile couldn’t leave either of their faces.

 

“Then I think you’re underestimating how beautiful you are,” Evelyn shrugged, “and you’re _overestimating_ how much friends sit around and flirt with each other.” Her words held an undertone of warning to them that Helen must have picked up on because she nodded quickly and put her palms out in a sign of surrender.

 

“Okay, sure, but remember that you started this!” she said laughingly.

 

Evelyn rolled her eyes with a wide grin, “Real mature.”

 

Helen appraised Evelyn for a long while, those brown eyes roving all over her as if tucking the memory away for a later date. The expression on Helen’s face was a thoughtful one. Evelyn was debating asking her what was so goddamn interesting when Helen answered the question before she could.

 

“You look tired… more than usual,” she said.

 

Evelyn dropped her head down a bit and tilted it away from Helen’s gaze, shrugging her thin shoulders once. The lack of any significant response came from the simple fact that she didn’t want to have this conversation with her. She didn’t want Helen to know how little she had been eating, the hours of sleep that she missed out on every night, how she was subjected _once_ _again_ to nightmares recently that kept her up even more than her insomnia.

 

Helen didn’t need to know the ends and outs of her mental bullshit. She would probably find a way to blame herself, anyhow, and then Evelyn would have to spend the next few hours convincing Helen that spending any more time fussing over her than she already did was just a waste of energy.

 

Evelyn sighed eventually, full and heavy, and stuck her lips to the side as she considered her observation. “I think it’s just been awhile since you’ve seen me regularly. You must’ve just been distracted the other day because I’m pretty sure I’ve always looked this tired.”

 

Helen eyed her skeptically, a frown tugging her brows together. “Remember when you made me promise not to lie to you?”

 

Evelyn sighed and dropped her head to the side in exasperation. “Yeah, so?” She held a staring contest with the woman in front of her for a moment that felt like it stretched on for ages.

 

“Maybe you’d like to return the favor?”

 

Evelyn let out a laugh of disbelief and dropped her head downward again, bracing her elbows on her knees while her face buried into her hands. She could feel that her cheeks were hot, a definite result of her embarrassment. There wasn’t anything in her that felt like breaking herself down to her bare bones in front of Helen that morning. It was one thing for Helen to have seen her cry, and to have comforted Evelyn as she tried to joke away whatever was plaguing her, but the past month had been extremely difficult.

 

She didn’t want Helen to know her this way, all ravaged on the inside and aching. She could barely stand herself. How would Helen be able to look at her the same?

 

She thought back to when the woman had stood behind her with reassuring hands as she drunkenly vomited into her own toilet and considered that maybe she couldn’t get any lower in her eyes anyway— current, intentionally repressed attraction be damned.

 

“I’m not here to judge you,” Helen said in the wake of the long silence as if she sensed her thoughts, “just… as a friend.”

 

Evelyn looked up from her hands and sighed again with all the weariness of the past month.

 

“I haven’t been getting much sleep, if any. I haven’t been sober for more than a few hours in lord knows how long. I made a mature and selfless decision the other day that still makes me sick every time I think about it, and then I hate myself for feeling that way because I did it for you. And you deserve better than to have your life fucked over by me _yet again_. So…” Evelyn tried to explain as cohesively as possible and realized that she came across bluntly. There was no other way to have said what she did, though, without an absurd amount of emotions, or god forbid more crying, and she was so sick of doing that in front of Helen that she would take the mark of nonchalance against her.

 

Helen eyed her sadly, those wide eyes squinting in sympathy. “Evelyn…”

 

“Oh, and Winston stopped by a while ago for the first time. He definitely could get me out of here and just won’t, I can tell. He thinks I deserve it. Which is fine, you know? Since I did what I did. He seemed sorry for my mental state, at least, but not enough to make our family lawyer get me a better deal.” Evelyn continued talking, and she could feel her voice taking on such an air of aloofness that it even startled her.

 

“I didn’t tell him about Gazerbeam and Fironic,” she shrugged again, “didn’t seem appropriate after almost a full bottle of wine on an empty stomach.” She said.

 

Helen’s look of concern was only in her peripheral vision, considering that she was looking away and at the floor. She didn’t want to see the sympathy in her eyes. The shame of it all was too much already. Oh, how far had she fallen from being the coveted brainchild behind DevTech. She wondered who had taken over for her. Whoever it was, she knew they were always going to be mediocre compared to her genius. She felt a sudden rush of resentment for whoever was working in her lab.

 

Helen brought her back to the present quickly.

 

“What can I do?”

 

The question was so simple, yet so loaded. Evelyn finally made eye contact with her, and was surprised to see not pity, but determination.

 

“Just… can you keep coming here? Talking to me,” she laughed uncomfortably. “Lately, you’re the only thing that’s been making me feel human.”

 

The blush that bloomed on Helen’s cheeks was obvious, and Evelyn had to bite the inside of her own cheek to stop herself from saying anything about how goddamn _cute_ she was when she smiled and looked away.

 

“I think I can manage to do that. If I _have to_ ,” she joked, looking up at Evelyn through her thick eyelashes as she grinned.

 

Evelyn chuckled a bit, smiling at her fondly. She itched to change the conversation, though, so she asked, “How’re things looking on the super villain front? I haven’t seen a paper in a while, but I can assume evil never sleeps. It sure doesn’t in this house,” she joked, vaguely gesturing to the bags beneath her eyes.

 

Helen rolled her eyes at her playfully, a smile overtaking her face at her words before it fell to a grave expression.

 

“There’s some guy out there right now who’s calling himself Mimick. You can guess what his power is.”

 

Evelyn raised an eyebrow, shrugging one shoulder as she threw her guess out to the air, “Uh… copycat type? Duplicates people? Or powers?”

 

Helen winked, “Bingo. He duplicates powers. There are so many Supers out of hiding now, though, and for the first time that’s a terrible thing.”

 

“Why’s that?” Evelyn asked.

 

“Because once he absorbs the power, he can continue to mimic it for what looks like a few days. Everyone who’s tried to fight him just ends up equipping him with another set of weapons to use against anyone else who tries. To use against the city. It’s smarter if they’d just settle on one person taking him down alone, but everyone wants to play hero now that it’s legal to. Strategy’s all out the window.” Helen huffed and a frown twisted her lips to the side.

 

“How many Supers could possibly have been hiding in Metroville?” Evelyn asked, confusion making her face scrunch up.

 

“Gosh, it’s a number you wouldn’t believe,” Helen sighed, rubbing her hand down her face.

 

“Try me.”

 

“There are currently twenty-three Supers operating in this city. Granted, in a city of three million, that doesn’t seem like a lot— but when it comes time to fight crime and you’re always rushing to get there before someone else swoops in to save the day… they add up. That’s twenty-three egos in competition with each other at all times.”

 

Evelyn stared back at her in astonishment, and she could feel the look of disgust taking over her face. She had so many questions, one of which involved how well Mr. Incredible was taking being in competition with all of the fresh blood. She wouldn’t bring Bob up, though, unless Helen said something first.

 

“So what happens when the gold rush, so to speak, calms down? Do you know how easy it is in a group of _twenty-three_ for everyone to collectively say, ‘Oh, someone else has got this,’ and then no one shows up?”

 

Helen shook her head, “Someone will always show up. It’s our duty as Supers—“

 

“You’re all just as human as anyone else. Why do you think I deal in technology and machines? They’re reliable; they are programmed to get the job done without emotion or human error. A number of Supers that size plays out one of three ways. One,” she held a finger up, “a certain Super gains the city’s love. They’re the one everyone calls when shit hits the fan. The other twenty-two? They move out of the city to fight crime elsewhere because their stage has been hijacked, or they give up heroing all together because their ego’s been shot. Two,”

 

Evelyn held up a second finger, “they start getting bolder to show off and stand out. We’re talking more casualties, more property damage, more disturbances,” Evelyn ranted. “Because the people don’t care about efficiency and quick wit, they want a show. They want shit-talking heroes who grandstand.” Her hands made wide, sweeping gestures around her as she spoke passionately about what could become the fall out of this influx.

 

“Or three…” a third finger raised, “where in a city full of Supers, everyone keeps leaving the saving to someone else. They think that someone else is going to handle that collapsing building because they’ve got other human shit to do, and responsibilities to take care of, and _surely_ _someone_ will save those people!” Evelyn gave a mirthless chuckle, “And then no one does. It’s called diffusion of responsibility. You should read up on it sometime. It’s actually pretty interesting.”

 

“What are we supposed to do then?” Helen asked. Exasperation coated her tone, and Evelyn could tell she was frustrated with her.

 

“You know what I’m going to say. Regardless of what Syndrome did to Fironic and Gazerbeam… my original point still stands,” Evelyn said, “let the city and the police do their job.”

 

“What happens when they _can’t,_ huh?” Helen asked, “Who gets to intervene then?”

 

Evelyn sighed, turning her eyes up to the high ceiling.

 

“In my ideal world? You do. Except— that’s just because I’d trust you to. Out of anyone,” she admitted.

 

“So in your ideal world, I’m the favored Super that makes all the other ones move out of the city?” Helen looked at her in amused disbelief when Evelyn made eye contact again.

 

“Considering six of those twenty-three are you and your family, plus Frozone because I think he’s a great guy as well, I think Metroville would be well-off with the protection of The Incredibles. And their icy friend.”

 

Helen slowly shook her head with a disbelieving smile playing on her thin lips. “I have to say… this is a big step forward from where you were as the Screenslaver.”

 

Evelyn smirked, breathing out a laugh through her nose. “Yeah, well, your costumes are designed by Edna Mode. How could I not be swayed?”

 

She watched Helen more carefully as they continued their conversation, feeling something lonely and sad settle gently down in the pit of her stomach. She hoped that spending this time with her, absorbing every little detail about this woman, would make her feel less depressed about willingly giving up feelings for her. Spending time with her when she could, she told herself that was supposed to be enough.

 

Being able to see in person the way that she so valiantly cared for everyone around her, the way that she would stretch certain limbs just a bit as she talked as if she were getting antsy being in her default form for too long and had to extend or else she would get uncomfortable, the way that she made such direct eye contact when they spoke— all of those little details were supposed to be enough. She had been to more museums in her life than most ever would see. She knew how to admire art without touching it.

 

She wasn’t the _greatest_ at not getting what she wanted. Her obsession with immediate gratification was an unfortunate downside to having always been so wealthy, but she was trying, for God’s sake. She was trying _so hard_ , and yet all she wanted to do while they talked on her living room floor was wrap her arms around Helen’s neck and kiss her until they were both dizzy.

 

Her heart thumped in her chest heavily, and she felt the warmth in her cheeks and burning behind her eyes that indicated that she had spiraled too far with her thoughts. She had a bad habit of making herself cry if she thought about it too much. This was the key reason she was always drinking.

 

“—just _burst into flames_ in the store because I was naive enough to take him through the candy isle and not get… him anything…” Helen trailed off from the story she was telling about her youngest son, and said, “Are you okay?”

 

Evelyn stood up quickly, avoiding eye contact with Helen as she took quick steps over to the bar, “Yeah, I’m fine. Why?” she asked. When she didn’t hear Helen say anything else for a stretch of time, she said over her shoulder, “Keep telling the story. He burst into flames _inside_ the store? Did the sprinklers go off?”

 

Evelyn was in the process of pouring herself three fingers of whiskey, she was fresh out of wine, when Helen’s hand rested over hers that had wrapped around the bottle. She turned around, startled, and saw that Helen was still sitting in the same spot. Her arm had stretched all the way across the large expanse of the room and gently took the bottle from her fingers.

 

“What the hell—“

 

“Talk to me. Talk to me instead of drinking away whatever it is you’re trying not to deal with,” Helen said softly.

 

Evelyn clenched her jaw in frustration and allowed the bottle to be taken away, not touching the glass with the small amount of alcohol she was able to pour before she was interrupted. She turned around to face where Helen was sitting, bracing her hands behind her on the bar counter and crossing one leg in front of the other.

 

“You don’t want to have this conversation,” she said, “trust me.”

 

Helen frowned a bit, and Evelyn could tell that she knew where their words would take them if they continued down this path.

 

“Do you want me to leave?”

 

Evelyn laughed with no real mirth behind it and shook her head as she rose her eyes up to the ceiling, studying the pristine whiteness of it. Not a spider web or bit of dust in sight. She wondered, for the smallest fraction of a second, how the hell her maid cleaned up there.

 

“I never want you to leave! That’s the problem,” she burst out, “I want you here _all the time_ , and knowing how badly I—“ she cut herself off. A deep sigh made her chest rise and fall as she let the air out slowly.

 

“I want you to stay. I want to keep talking to you. But, I also know it would be best if you left for today. Feel free to come by whenever you want still… just— I can’t do today right now.” She got the words out partially through her teeth and wondered how long she would have to keep ripping her own heart out for the sake of her sanity.

 

Helen’s warm eyes were understanding as she stood up and withdrew her hand from where it was still holding the alcohol bottle on the counter. She straightened her shirt and took a step toward Evelyn before it seemed as if she reminded herself that physical contact was probably a bad idea. She turned toward the front door instead.

 

Evelyn followed her out, and she stood in the doorway as Helen guiltily looked down at her feet. Her bottom lip was worrying itself between two rows of white teeth, and Evelyn felt terrible.

 

“It’s nothing you did, okay? It’s never you,” she explained, "and the turtleneck could only help so much." A sad smile tugged at her mouth.

 

Helen looked up at her finally, and she seemed to be internally debating something before asking, “Can I hug you? Please?”

 

Evelyn couldn’t have said no if her life relied on it, and instead of answering, she held her arms out the way Helen had to her all of that time ago.

 

The other woman beamed a radiant smile and wrapped her arms around Evelyn’s neck tightly. Evelyn’s arms found themselves crushing around Helen’s small waist and pulling her impossibly close to savor the feeling. Her perfume was stronger today, and she chuckled a bit against her neck.

 

“Did you put on more perfume than usual?” She asked into the fabric of her black turtleneck. She felt Helen’s body shake with laughter in her arms.

 

“You caught me,” she said guiltily.

 

Evelyn pulled away just a bit, still holding onto Helen, but able to look into her eyes.

 

“Like I’ve said before. You, Helen Parr, are something else entirely.” She stared at her as if Helen were some otherworldly being that she couldn’t crack the code of. The _only_ code that her mind couldn’t crack.

 

“Now, get out of here before I change my mind about not being a homewrecker,” she joked, hoping that it wasn’t too soon.

 

The way that Helen threw her head back with laughter said that it wasn’t.

 

“Bye Ev,” Helen murmured, pulling away. The nickname was new, but Evelyn decided that she loved the way it came off of her lips.

 

“Bye,” she whispered as Helen retreated down the front stairs.

 

_Ev_ , she thought. The butterflies swarming her stomach were better than any expensive alcohol she had at her bar.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This angst train only goes for one more chapter, friends, and then we're cruising into the fluff! And chapter 9 is a very important one to the story that I can't wait to share with you all :) Much love to all of you with the heartfelt and thoughtful comments, the lovely fan art, and the sweet interactions on tumblr.


	9. Simple Question

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn gets a visitor with a proposition for her, and someone bares their soul to an enemy.

The next morning, Evelyn was jolted awake from where she had passed out on her couch by six  _ booming  _ loud knocks. The first few had manifested in her dream as thunder rumbling through the dark sky, but eventually she was fully conscious to register that they were something very different than viscous-sounding storm clouds. She blearily looked past the empty bottle of whiskey atop the coffee table to squint out of the blindingly bright window and see whose car was there.

 

She couldn’t find one. Whoever it was had parked up the street, maybe. It couldn’t have been Helen. Her knocks never sounded anything like  _ that _ .

 

Three more shook the door with every pound, and her heart was lodged in her throat as she mentally ran through a long list of people furious enough with her to be knocking so aggressively on her door that weren’t the police. 

 

She had one main suspicion, and she was praying to an entity that she didn’t even believe in that it wasn’t who she thought it was. He was supposed to be in South America, for God’s sake, it couldn’t be him.

 

She stood up from the couch with a violent pounding in her temples, squinting against the harsh sunlight pouring in from the floor to ceiling windows. Her feet carried her across the floor warily, and she swallowed down the fear pooling beneath the horrible taste on her tongue. She turned the knob just slightly after unlocking the door and cracked it open just enough to peek through. 

 

Her heart fell to the floor as ice slithered through her veins. The mahogany pushed entirely open without any assistance from her, and she stumbled back slightly. Her eyes peered up at the man looming over her much smaller body.

 

“Oh… hey there, Robert,” she stared, barely lifting the corners of her lips to laugh awkwardly. She tried to square her shoulders, defiantly jutting her chin out in a faux display of confidence. Every ideation she’d ever conjured of him crushing her skull between his fingers came back with painfully realistic clarity, and she felt herself cringe away when he took a step toward her. His expression wasn’t the pinched one of rage she expected, but it showed that he wasn’t pleased to see her either.

 

“We have a lot to talk about,” his low voice announced gravely. 

 

Evelyn cleared her throat after a beat and vaguely gestured toward the couch with both hands. She felt the jitteriness in them and quickly stuffed them into the pockets of her silk robe after closing the door back. She considered locking it and then ultimately decided that if things went south she needed as few obstacles between her and an exit as possible. Bob took heavy steps over to the plush couch, sinking into the cushion on the far end from her and looking terribly out of place. 

 

Evelyn had thought a lot about death, whether it was when she was plummeting from the sky down to her inevitable demise, or in the midst of her long lasting depressive episode. Being confronted with the possibility of it though, she hoped she was just being dramatic, but the terror that gripped her by the throat made her voice crack when she spoke next.

 

“Would you like something to drink—“

 

“Just… sit down.” His eyes were squinted as he studied her, and it was as though he were looking for something specific. She hesitantly perched on the edge of the couch on the opposite side as him, sitting on the arm of it instead of the cushion.

 

“Now, I don’t know about everything that’s happened between you and my wife. I wasn’t there while she worked with you to legalize Supers until you lured me into that room,” he began, “hypnotized me.”

 

There was an undercurrent of accusation in his voice that he was clearly fighting to keep down.

 

“But I know  _ her _ ,” he said.

 

Evelyn watched his face warily, seeing the number of emotions playing out and not being able to settle on any single one before it reverted back to a calm anger.

 

“And I know she’s been coming here even after I asked her not to— skipping her appointments with Dr. Anderson,” he sighed heavily and rubbed his forehead with his fingers, “but she came home from seeing you yesterday with the  _ biggest  _ smile on her face. Happier than I’ve seen her in a while.” 

 

He chuckled in sad disbelief and curled the hand against his face into a fist so that he could prop his forehead up with it. 

 

“I asked her where she was coming from, and she didn’t even lie to me! I didn’t expect her to— she’s not the lying type— but now there’s something that I need to get off of  _ my _ chest. To you.” He dropped his hands onto his knees and turned his upper body to face her more fully. The look in his blue eyes was one that pleaded for her to hear him out. He was so far from the vindictive anger that she had expected him to exude that she was at a loss for words.

 

She swallowed down the nervousness at the back of her throat, wincing at the taste of stale alcohol on her tongue, and nodded twice for him to continue.

 

“I have always felt guilty for not giving Helen the life I promised her when we got married,” he began, his thick eyebrows furrowing over his dropped gaze.

 

“There was this man, Oliver San-Suite, who tried to commit suicide the night of our wedding. That same night, I stopped a train from derailing that left a lot of the passengers injured. A couple weeks later, San-Suite sued me for saving him from jumping out of a building, and half the people on that train hit me with lawsuits back to back. We never did take our honeymoon,” he sighed, “I was in and out of court for as long as the trip was planned for.”

 

Evelyn heard herself speaking before she even realized it, “That’s when politicians started calling for Supers to retire.”

 

He looked up with a hint of surprise behind his light eyes, “Yes, exactly. I went from being this country’s  _ hero _ , a household name, to a disgrace… and worse once we went into hiding, a nobody. And it was my own fault!” He chuckled lowly in disbelief.

 

“We got married because we loved each other, obviously, but we had these grand plans of saving the world together. Being a  _ Super family _ . Then who we were, the most amazing part of both of us, was illegal, and the past fifteen years were spent trying to learn how to be a normal couple… a normal family. We were never meant to be that,” Bob seemed as if he were only talking to himself at the moment, and Evelyn felt like she was eavesdropping even though he was speaking only to her.

 

“I worked for a guy... he was one fourth my height, maybe. Napoleon complex like you’ve never seen,” he gave a slight shake of his head, “patronized me every second that I worked in that office. In that tiny little cubicle remembering that I used to be  _ great _ . I threw him through a wall one day… just snapped. A man was getting mugged outside and he threatened to fire me if I left to go help him,” his face began to tint red with anger as he took himself back to that moment. 

 

“I have given everything in me to make myself happy again, to make  _ her _ happy again, and Supers being legalized now… I thought that we had finally done it. But I could even tell through our phone calls while I was away that she was still miserable at home. Distant. She always was in her own head after everything with you being the Screenslaver happened. And then I finally  _ understood why _ once I found out she’d been coming here all this time without telling me.” He turned his unreadable gaze up at her, searching her face for something. Evelyn tensed a bit at the scrutiny and jutted her chin outward defensively again, crossing her arms over her chest and holding herself tightly.

 

“What I’m saying is, I’m used to punching my way through problems, beating anything that stands in my way into submission. I can’t do that here. She’d never forgive me... Hell, I wouldn’t forgive myself. The things you’ve done to my family were  _ unforgivable _ ,” he made direct eye contact with her as he said it, and something in her withered a bit with guilt.

 

“But she’s taught me to be better than that. And if she can see the good in you,” his sigh was defeated, “I trust her and her judgement enough to  _ try _ and think you’re not a sadistic sociopath,” he grumbled.

 

Evelyn was silent for a long while, having no idea what to say. What  _ could _ she even say? She held enough empathy in her heart to put herself in Bob’s shoes. How would she be feeling right now if she’d had Helen all along, and someone like herself swooped in after threatening her livelihood and safety, and slowly started pulling her away despite everyone’s best efforts? She would hate herself if she were Bob. She wouldn’t be sitting in her home trying to have a civil discussion, she would have used his super strength to level the mansion until it was surrounded by rubble and a plume of dust clouded the air with her body buried beneath it all. Then she realized that’s exactly what she had been projecting onto him from the moment he stepped through her front door.

 

She supposed that Robert Parr was a better man than she would have been. This was another mental note that told her she couldn’t deserve Helen even as a  _ friend _ if she spent the rest of her life trying to prove that she did.

 

What was it with the Parr family and always taking the high road with her?

 

“Anyway…” Bob said in the oppressive silence of the massive house, “I’m going to ask you one thing before I say what I really came here to say.”

 

Evelyn wiped her clammy palms over the silk of her robe, back and forth. The material caught on the dampness of her hands.

 

“What?” Her voice was hoarse. She swallowed heavily.

 

“What is it gonna take for you to stay away from my wife?”

 

The dull thud of her headache made a sweeping reappearance in her right temple, and she dropped her eyes down to look at her upturned palms that rested in her lap. 

 

“I tried to st—“ she cut herself off upon realizing that she hadn’t really tried much at all. She was forced to when Helen wasn’t speaking to her, yes, but after that she made no effort to keep her distance in any way that mattered. Bob had been too honest with her for Evelyn to lie even a little bit.

 

“I told her that we could only be friends. If she wants to keep coming here, I can’t stop her. And I—” she shook her head and picked at the nail on her thumb, “I can’t turn her away. I couldn’t do that to her.”’ She couldn’t do it to herself again, either.

 

Bob shocked her by looking as if he understood what she meant, and the terrifying thought that they had something common by them both being damned by their immense care for the same woman burned brightly in her mind.

 

“I figured you’d say something like that,” he huffed and leaned back into the couch. His massive torso sunk into the cushions while one large hand rose to scratch at his forehead.

 

“Then here’s what I came here to tell you. I spoke with Helen last night before we went to bed. Two hour long conversation that basically waters itself down to one simple question that she asked me: Would I be willing to open our marriage?”

 

The shock that tore through Evelyn’s body physically rocked her, and one of her hands reached out to steady herself on the back of the couch as her heart plunged into her stomach. Her eyes blinked several quick times in utter confusion before she let out a louder than intended, “ _ What _ ?”

 

Bob raised his hands up placatingly, an expression on his face that told her he’d had the same reaction.

 

“I know, just hear me out! She wanted to know if I was willing to open our marriage to one other person for each of us that had gotten the other’s approval. The only,  _ only _ reason I approved you is because of how much she cares about you. Don’t forget that.” His voice turned menacing, and a chill ran down her arms at the unspoken threat. The second that Helen didn’t want her anymore, she was fair game for whatever  _ Mr. Incredible _ had to throw at her. 

 

“ _ Wait _ , wait, wait! You said  _ yes _ ?” she shouted in disbelief. 

 

“I just wanna make her happy,  _ really _ happy, for once! And if that means I have to share her with you,” he sighed, “then so be it.”

 

Evelyn stared incredulously, and she had to remind herself to close her mouth from where her jaw had dropped. Her heart was soaring even through the awful hangover tearing up the inside of her body, and in her utter disbelief she almost missed what he said next.

 

“Now I don’t know a lot about all of this… women being attracted to women business. I don’t need to know. All I care about is how you, as a person, treat my wife, and if at any point in time you make her unhappy I swear to God—“ his teeth and fist clenched around the threat, and Evelyn felt the hairs on her arms stand at attention. He released the build up of his threat with a deep sigh that made his shoulders lower from around his neck.

 

“Just… be careful with her. She’s the toughest woman I know, but she’s so...” he tried and failed to search for the right words. His eyes were sad when he looked down at his loosened fist.

 

“I love her so much,” he said finally. Evelyn could only watch as this hulking powerhouse of a man curled into himself in front of her, baring his soul to a woman he despised for his wife. She couldn’t help but wonder if she would do the same if she were in his shoes, and ultimately came to the conclusion that she had no clue if she would have been strong enough.

 

A newfound respect for his hero name sprouted within her.

 

“She loves you, too,” Evelyn heard herself say. The words were out of her mouth before she could stop them, and she had gained his attention easily. His eyes were overcast with doubt, and she felt a lump in her throat that she continued to speak around.

 

“I can see it in her face every time she talks about you,” she said, “and regardless of whatever arrangement we agree to tonight… I don’t think she’s ever going to forgive herself for breaking your trust to begin with.” Evelyn felt so surreal having this conversation with Bob, as if she were maybe still in some elaborate, drunken dream. She could only look at him in glances because the sunlight was pouring in directly from the window behind him, and she felt too frozen in place by their conversation to get up and draw the curtains.

 

Bob laughed the tiniest amount down at the floor, pointing the toe of his loafers against the purple rug beneath his feet.

 

“She’s always beating herself up over something. I already told her I forgave her, that I knew she was going through a confusing time, and that I was willing to help her,” he said, gesturing at the air with his hands out in front of him, palms up, as he spoke.

 

Evelyn spoke up against her better judgement, “You do know that conversion therapy is the worst type of help you could have offered her, don’t you?” She really didn’t want to start a fight with a man that could punt her across the city if he so pleased, but she  _ had  _ to say something.

 

“What do you mean?” he asked, raising one thick, blond eyebrow as he turned to look at her.

 

“I  _ mean _ … it should be illegal. It’s abuse— it’s torture! What’s going on with Helen, what’s going on with me, it isn’t something that needs to be  _ fixed _ .” She said those words aloud for the first time, and something inside of her cracked open and spilled a lightness throughout her chest.

 

“It’s a part of us that’s healthy, and the only reason I could ever see the need for a therapist in this situation would be to help people like us cope in a world that’s been telling us we’re sick for the way that we feel— that’s been making us feel crazy for being  _ ourselves _ .”

 

Evelyn was soon breathless with the weight of her words, shocking even herself with such a righteous realization. A smile was threatening to overtake her face, but she kept it at bay in order to avoid making Bob look at her any more strangely than he already was.

 

“I can’t say that I understand, Evelyn, but believe me I want to. I want to know how to help her… and if you’re telling me the best way to help her is to just let her be as she is…” he seemed to struggle to process the logic, frowning deeply and searching the floor as he considered it. 

 

“I’ll take it into consideration. Which means I’ll talk to her about it. Sorry, but you can’t blame me for not being ready to take your word on anything right away,” he said, eying her with narrowed blue eyes.

 

“I get it,” she murmured, dropping her gaze back down.

 

They both sat in silence. The moment stretched on until it was almost unbearable, Bob looking everywhere but at her and Evelyn looking down at the palms of her hands, hoping above all else that this visit would be over soon.

 

“I just realized I assumed what your answer was for my question,” Bob said out of the blue. Evelyn jerked her head up to look at him curiously for half a second before understanding dawned across her.

 

“You assumed correctly,” she said quietly, “and thank you… for doing this. I know you didn’t do it for me, but—“ she laughed without any real humor in it and looked back down at her hands.

 

“Just… thank you, Robert. You’re a good man. And this probably means nothing to you, but I genuinely am  _ so sorry _ for what I did to you and your family. I don’t know how I’ll ever be able to make up for it all.” The guilt gnawing down on Evelyn’s insides felt raw and achy.

 

Bob stood from the couch with a bit of effort, throwing his interlocked fingers over his head and stretching out all of the cracks in his back.

 

“You won’t be able to make up for it all. The closest you can do is treat Helen how she deserves to be treated. Or else,” he turned around to look down at her much smaller frame, and the flinch that rocked her backward with the suddenness of his movement made him pause where he was.

 

Evelyn’s heart was pounding unreasonably hard in her chest, and her eyes opened again one at a time. When he spoke next she was drawing in a deep, shaky breath.

 

“You’re afraid of me,” he stated. The look on his face was one of disbelieving amusement, and she felt herself grow furious at the effect he had on her, clenching her jaw so hard that her headache thudded even heavier. She shoved her trembling hands into the pockets of her robe once more and clenched them into fists.

 

“I can’t believe I thought…” he chuckled to himself and shook his head a bit, “never mind.”

 

She wanted to ask him what he thought, what misconceptions of her he’d been holding before he made the trip to her home. She couldn’t unclench her jaw to get the words out.

 

“Helen will be over to see you tomorrow,” he said, making his way toward the front door.

 

“This should be the last visit you get from me. If I’m here again, that means something  _ very _ bad for you.” He let the threat hang in the air between them before letting himself out. When the door closed behind him, she released a breath that she had no idea she was holding.

 

Her body took several, excruciatingly long, moments before it relaxed from its tensed position. Her breaths were shallow and quick, and her heart still thudded heavily in her rib cage.

 

She wished she could say that his threatening her was unwarranted, but considering all she had done to him and his family? She was shocked that it was the only thing he had thrown her way. 

 

Evelyn stood from the arm of her couch and wrapped her robe tighter around her body as she got up to lock the door before shuffling back to her bedroom. She eyed the faint red stain coating a large spot beneath her nightstand and sighed. Her maid had tried her best to get it out, but frankly she couldn’t be upset with her for not erasing it completely. It was her own fault for leaving it until she came by to clean anyway.

 

She sat down on the edge of her bed and rubbed her hands, still unbelievably clammy, over her thighs.

 

Despite the jitters that still ran through her, she finally allowed herself to dive into the thought that she and Helen could be  _ something  _ more without the world falling apart. 

 

The smile that slowly spread across her face made her cheeks hurt, and she threw her torso down onto the bed to stare up at the ceiling with her hands clasped over her forehead.

 

“I’ll be damned,” she whispered.   
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So for all of you asking how I planned to tackle the inevitable barrier of Helen and Bob's marriage, I'm glad I could finally share this chapter with you. I wouldn't call it "healthy" polyamory by any means, but considering the circumstances and the time period it's roughly what I personally would expect to come out of it, if anything were to come out of it at all. As always, much love to you all and thanks for reading.


	10. New to This

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn has a bonding moment with her maid for once, and Helen stops by.

Evelyn stood in the full length mirror within her walk-in closet. She hadn’t touched the room since her house arrest, not really. All of the designer clothes that lined rows of hangers were utterly useless to her when there was nowhere to go but to another room in her own home. She had entered at first with trepidation, nostalgically brushing her fingers across fine fabrics as she walked past. With a sigh, she now stood in the marble-framed mirror and turned sideways.

 

She stood naked, nothing to her person but the skin she was born in. Her hand slowly rose to brush down her ribcage, and she frowned at how it protruded slightly. Her fingers rose and fell with the bumps of it as she slid her hand down to her stomach. Instead of the healthy jutting of muscle that had been there before, her stomach went slightly concave, dipping in toward her spine just enough that she could notice. Her teeth ground together of their own accord as she raised her arm up and flexed it into a muscle, noting immediately how much smaller her limbs had gotten. A sigh breezed last her lips as she turned forward again. She cupped her breasts in her hands, and while they had never been particularly large, she could absolutely tell that they had shrunken a bit. Her brows dug down over her nose even more intensely than before.

 

“ _Jesus_ ,” she muttered.

 

Next she tugged at the brunette hair that flopped down over her forehead, pulling it straight down her face and crossing her eyes to look at it up close. When she was finished, she pushed it back until it was all tucked behind her ears and looked at herself in the mirror once more. Her hair was getting far too long. It brushed the bottom of her neck every time that she moved, and her lips twisted to the side as she contemplated taking scissors to it herself. She bounced a bit on the balls of her feet as she tried to fight through her indecision and huffed, relenting to her own thoughts that begged her to chop it off.

 

She walked over to the dresser pushed up against the wall of her closet and her hand floated over the top of it for a moment as she scanned with her eyes for where her scissors were. Upon spotting them, she snatched them up along with a comb and walked back to the mirror with determination in her gaze.

 

She got close enough to the mirror that she could see what she was doing and got to snipping.

 

Several hours later found Evelyn in the kitchen with her maid. The short blonde had just brought in groceries from outside, and the thin sheen of sweat across her forehead said that it was particularly hot that day. The poor woman shot nervous glances at her when she thought she wasn’t looking to this very day, and Evelyn braced her hands on the island counter top as she realized she was sick of it.

 

“Do you have a problem?” she asked, sharper than she had intended.

 

The shorter woman jumped a bit, pausing from where she had been putting an old, outdated carton of milk into a giant garbage bag along with all of the other things that had spoiled because Evelyn never touched them. She shook her head quickly, swallowing before turning her green eyes up at the owner of the mansion.

 

“N—no ma’am.” Her voice was quiet, and it trembled just slightly. She continued to replace the old things in Evelyn’s refrigerator with freshly purchased ones, and avoided making eye contact with her the entire time.

 

Eventually, Evelyn spoke again.

 

“Do you like working here, Judy?”

 

The woman wiped her hands off on the front of her pale blue apron and nodded after a short second. Her eyes still wouldn’t meet Evelyn’s, but she stopped moving in order to provide her full attention.

 

“Yes ma’am.”

 

“What did I tell you about calling me ma’am?” Evelyn sighed, bending over on the island to prop her elbow up and hold her chin in her hand. She had to admit, the southern twang was pretty adorable. It nodded to how little they ever really spoke that Evelyn had a chance to overlook it all this time.

 

“Sorry, Miss Deavor!”

 

Evelyn wanted to laugh because her alternative was hardly any better, but she refrained. Judy blatantly looked far to the left of Evelyn’s head as she spoke to her, and the taller woman was quickly running out of patience.

 

“You would tell me if you didn’t, right? Didn’t like working for me?”

 

Judy nodded quickly, her blonde hair bouncing in her high ponytail. Evelyn questioned why she had ever hired a twenty seven year old woman instead of one of those sweet older ladies like her family had when she was younger.

 

“Please don’t lie to me, Judy.”

 

Judy looked her in the eyes finally and clasped her hands in front of her waist with a soft sigh before saying, “I wouldn’t tell you, Miss Deavor. I s’pose you’d have no way of knowin’. I like my paycheck too much to complain.”

 

Evelyn considered her candidness for a moment and nodded to herself, straightening up and drumming her short nails onto the countertop.

 

“What would make being here better for you? Honestly.”

 

Judy seemed to seriously consider the question as if she had never asked herself that before. Evelyn watched her with slightly squinted eyes, intrigued by her suddenly.

 

“I’d like to be able to talk to you,” she said.

 

Evelyn paused in shock with a confused frown creasing her forehead as she looked directly into those forest green eyes across from her.

 

“There was never a rule against it. You could have always talked to me.”

 

Judy grimaced a bit and looked down at the pristine kitchen tiles, “You don’t quite make it easy to approach you, Miss Deavor.”

 

Evelyn scoffed, though deep down she knew that Judy had an excellent point. She laughed a bit, shaking her head, and sighed.

 

“I’ll work on that, then. Anything else?”

 

Judy considered the question for several seconds and then piped up, “Oh! My daughter’s birthday is coming up… I was wondering if I could maybe have the week off so that me and my husband could take her on a trip?”

 

Her eyes were bright and hopeful, and she was more alive than Evelyn had ever seen her come in this house. She felt a small smile tug at her lips as she nodded. “Absolutely. Tell your daughter I said happy birthday.”

 

Judy beamed, showing off a row of off-white teeth that had not been forced into perfection by braces, yet were not unflattering in their slight crookedness. Evelyn basked in the feeling that blossomed beneath her breast, the one that was warm for having extended aid to another. She decidedly liked it.

 

“I will! Thank you, Miss Deavor!”

 

Evelyn waved off her thanks, “Aw, it’s nothing.” She had begun to move to the cabinet to pull out a box of pancake mix for her first real breakfast in who knew how long when Judy hesitantly spoke up from behind her.

 

“Oh, and, um… Miss Deavor?”

 

“You _can_ call me Evelyn,” she sighed as she reached up on the tips of her toes for the box. She cursed Helen for being the last person to use it because she likely stretched to get it on the shelf without thinking of how complicated it would be for Evelyn to retrieve it in the future.

 

Her fingers barely brushed the edges of the red packaging when Judy’s next words shot a chill up her spine.

 

“I couldn’t help but overhear what happened between you and the woman who comes to visit. About a month ago? I was packing up to leave, but then I heard yellin’… then the lady flew out of here like a bat outta hell. I’ve been meaning to tell you that I would never tell anyone. You have my word.”

 

Evelyn slowly lowered herself from the tips of her toes and turned to look at the smaller woman, noting her right hand up and her palm out in a promise to never expose what was a very loud, and very scandalous, conversation. She wondered what kind of woman Judy was that she didn’t blackmail her, the wealthiest woman in the city, to make her buy her silence. She stared at her in disbelief for a long moment before blinking back to the present moment.

 

“I appreciate that, Judy. Really. Thank you.”

 

Judy bowed her head a little bit and grinned up at Evelyn, “Oh, it’s nothin! I got an aunt who’s livin’ with her ‘best friend’ and has been for the past twenty years. The whole family knows and won’t say anything. I know I don’t care, especially because they’re so happy. And it’s none of my business anyway, right?” She laughed a bit and went back to putting groceries back into the refrigerator.

 

Evelyn stood with her arms still halfway up reaching toward the cabinet and her head still facing her maid with a slightly open mouth and disbelieving eyes. She shook herself out of it and continued reaching for pancake mix that was just barely in her grasp.

 

* * *

Evelyn opened the door for Helen a couple of hours after Judy left for the day. The hero looked her up and down with sparkling eyes, a smile slowly pulling the corners of her lips upward until she was beaming.

 

“You cut your hair!” Helen exclaimed, reaching her hand up to run her fingers through the wispy strands above Evelyn’s ears. Evelyn blushed a bit, dropping her head down to avoid the intensity of Helen’s gaze. It did not escape her that this was the first time they were alone together with no restrictions on their interactions.

 

“It’s no big deal.”

 

Helen’s fingers tilted her chin back up and gently pushed her into the house by taking steps forward that Evelyn matched moving back. The door closed behind them both, and then thin arms were around Evelyn’s neck possessively. Helen’s nose brushed the tip of hers, and a joyous laugh bubbled from out of Evelyn’s smiling mouth.

 

With a soft grunt, Evelyn reached down and picked Helen up by the backs of her knees until her legs were wrapped firmly around her hips. The airborne woman giggled in surprise, and Evelyn pressed their foreheads together.

 

She locked onto the deep brown eyes in front of her, and a balloon-like feeling expanded in her chest until she was overwhelmed by it. The only way to quell it was to do what she did next.

 

Her lips gently pressed against Helen’s, feeling the soft give to them beneath her own mouth. The kiss was languid and nurturing; they were so careful with each other it was as if they thought the other would shatter in their arms. Evelyn’s mind had been spinning, but now it slowed into a relaxed buzz that sent tingles all the way down to her toes. They stayed in that embrace for a suspended amount of time before Evelyn slowly pulled back.

 

Her eyes fluttered open dazedly and met the closed ones in front of her that still seemed to be stuck in a dream state. Helen’s lips were partially quirked into a smile, and the look of utter content on her face was one that Evelyn wished that she could keep there for the rest of her life.

 

“Hi,” Evelyn whispered over her lips.

 

“Hey,” Helen smiled, finally opening her eyes. Her pupils were wide open. Evelyn tilted her head up and pressed her lips to the tip of her nose, feeling more playful and youthful than she had in _years_.

 

Helen’s face scrunched up adorably, her dark eyes crossing to look down at where Evelyn’s lips had just been. Slim arms tightened around Helen’s thighs and she walked the two of them over to the couch, throwing the Super down onto one of the bouncy cushions and following soon after by climbing with her knees on either side of Helen’s hips.

 

“What are you doing,” Helen asked breathlessly. Her cheeks were stained a deep pink, and Evelyn simply sat back on her lap and looked at her reverently.

 

“Why sit on the floor when I could sit on you?” The smirk that tugged one corner of her lips up spoke to the freedom she felt even while contained within the perimeter of her home. The bracelet around her ankle did nothing to the weightless feeling floating through her entire body.

 

Helen’s laugh was strangled, like the poor woman was entirely overstimulated, and Evelyn drew back a bit.

 

“Is— this okay? I thought since…” she was starting to panic, that little voice in the back of her head telling her that she came on too strong, that Helen would turn her away.

 

Helen placed her finger over her stammering mouth and and continued to laugh breathlessly.

 

“This is fine. I’m just new to this, that’s all.”

 

“Do you and Bob not… you’ve been married for _years—_ “

 

“ _You_ are not Bob,” Helen smiled, leaning forward to press her lips to Evelyn’s briefly. “I’m learning a whole new person, and up until a month ago, you didn’t even like to be touched.”

 

Evelyn conceded that she had a point and shrugged her shoulders a bit, nodding twice.

 

“Sorry, I’m just… happy.”

 

Helen’s eyes were warm and engulfing as she gazed into Evelyn’s.

 

“Don’t apologize for being happy. I think it looks beautiful on you,” she smiled.

 

Evelyn swallowed heavily and felt her cheeks get overwhelmingly warm, looking down at Helen’s stomach so that she didn’t have to look her in the eye. Helen’s fingers lifted her chin back up, and she tilted her head until Evelyn made eye contact with her.

 

“Can’t I compliment you?”

 

Evelyn sighed heavily, “If you can’t find _anything_ better to do, then sure.”

 

Helen’s laugh danced like warm water through her stomach, and the hero drew her hand from where it lingered beneath her chin up to brush the backs of her fingers over Evelyn’s cheekbone.

 

“Have you been taking care of yourself?”

 

“Yes, actually. I made myself breakfast this morning, cut my hair, obviously… I’m gonna start working out again, I think. Drink less.”

 

“Who are you and what have you done with the Evelyn I know and care about?” Helen chuckled, staring up at her with eyes that twinkled in equal parts amazement and confusion.

 

Evelyn looked down into her eyes and reached her hand up to intertwine with the one Helen held against her cheek. “I don’t know what it is. I woke up this morning and I just had all of this energy and drive to do things again. I finished a design that I’m gonna give to Winston to get created when he comes back over, too.”

 

She grinned with pride at such accomplishments, and Helen’s response made her stomach flip. Her elastic arms wrapped around her torso three times, pulling her impossibly close. She could see every eyelash framing Helen’s gaze before the hero was claiming her lips in a searing kiss. Evelyn melted into her, cupping her jaw in both of her hands as she returned the caress of her lips enthusiastically.

 

They remained that way for far shorter than Evelyn would have preferred, and when Helen’s kisses grew distracted before she pulled away, she looked down at her in confusion. Helen’s thin eyebrows were drawn together, lips parted as if on the verge of speaking.

 

The words were not forthcoming, however.

 

“What’s wrong?” Evelyn asked after a long moment, growing sick of the way every single thing made her heart plummet into the bottom of her gut. Common sense be damned, she was convinced that Helen was on the verge of getting up and running out on her at any given second.

 

Instead of answering, Helen’s arms slowly unraveled from around her and reverted back to their initial length before her thin fingers traveled up the sides of her blue and white striped button down. Her hands were prodding, but gentle, and soon Evelyn realized exactly where their conversation was about to head. She sighed.

 

“Ev… your ribs—“ Helen began.

 

“I know, okay? I know, and it’s getting taken care of. I feel a lot better.” She tried to project as much sincerity into her gaze as possible as she spoke, needing to convey exactly how little Helen needed to worry. This was no easy feat for a woman whose profession of choice was literally to worry over an entire city of people, Evelyn supposed.

 

“Wait, were you not eating? You weren’t sick, were you?” Helen’s voice was steadily taking on notes of deep concern, and Evelyn could only laugh without any real mirth behind the sound.

 

“I wasn’t _sick_ , I was depressed.” She lifted one leg from over Helen’s waist until she was no longer straddling her, flopping down in the space right beside the Super with a huff. Helen turned her body up onto the seat until her knees dug into the couch cushion beneath her.

 

Holding her hands out between them as if she was unsure what to do, she asked, “... Can I see?”

 

Evelyn’s face grew warm with deep embarrassment, and she fixed her gaze hard on a random spot of the coffee table before nodding twice. She could feel that her brows were pinched and tried her best to smooth them out.

 

It was just Helen. Helen was safe. She repeated this to herself over and over as those gentle fingers slowly lifted up her shirt until it bunched below her breasts. Evelyn sat up a bit to assist her.

 

Refusing to look at whatever expression was on the other woman’s face, Evelyn resigned herself to trying not to move while Helen’s hands traced the ridges of her rib cage. Eventually they made their way to her stomach, and she flinched, biting back a smile that she grew frustrated at growing to begin with.

 

She could see Helen’s face shift from her peripherals, and knew that she had been found out.

 

“Are you ticklish?” Helen asked, amusement lacing her question.

 

Evelyn jutted her chin out, swiping her jaw to the side to side defensively.

 

“No.”

 

“Oh, no? So I guess you won’t mind if I just…” Helen trailed off for a beat before both of her hands were viciously attacking Evelyn’s midriff. Evelyn released a loud yelp as she curled in on herself automatically, pressing her thighs into her stomach to try and trap Helen’s hands and get them to just _stop_.

 

“Fucking—“ she wheezed, “cut it out!”

 

When Helen didn’t let up, her own amused laughter filtering through the air to mix in with Evelyn’s increasingly frantic yells, Evelyn tried to claw the digits off of her to no avail. For such a small woman, Helen was _strong_.

 

“God damn— you, Helen!” Evelyn forced out between laughter, and she was thanking whoever would listen when the attack on her finally stopped. She was heaving, trying to regain her breath when Helen placed a kiss to the side of her head. Evelyn turned to glare at her.

 

“Come on, was I supposed to miss the perfect opportunity to _tickle_ the Screenslaver? Who do you take me for?” Helen’s smile never left her lips.

 

“Who do _I_ take you for? I don’t think you want to know,” Evelyn taunted, barely having regained her breath. Helen raised her hands again, moving suddenly as if she were going to attack her again, and Evelyn’s flinch away from her made the hero laugh again.

 

“Alright, all jokes aside,” Helen said with a sigh that signaled the end of her laughter, “please be safe. And if there’s anything I can do— if I need to come by every morning and cook for you myself, I’ll do it.”

 

Evelyn looked at her with an inflated heart that could barely move, for all of the space was taken up by itself.

 

“You don’t have to do that. But if I need help, I’ll tell you. Promise.”

 

Helen mirrored their position from before and dropped herself into Evelyn’s lap, both knees on either side of her. Evelyn’s hands instinctually rose to caress Helen’s thighs, her nails dragging up and down the rough material of her jeans.

 

“So I talked to Bob when he got back from here last night,” Helen said.

 

Evelyn fought to keep her eyes from rolling, but she knew that her agitation was directed at the fear that sat thick and heavy at the back of her throat at the mention of him.

 

“I’m not sure I want to discuss your husband while I have you on my lap.”

 

Helen smiled apologetically, “I wouldn’t bring him up if it wasn’t important.”

 

Evelyn conceded and motioned for her to continue.

 

“Thank you for trying to explain the whole… conversion therapy thing to him. When he talked to me about it again and realized how bad it was— unnecessarily so...“ she paused, pursing her lips and looking away, “I don’t think he’ll ever let himself live it down. So thanks for standing up for me. I know it must have been hard to speak up to tell him anything about what’s best for me, all things between us considered. But I’m glad you did.”

 

Helen looked into her eyes again, and Evelyn leaned forward to press her lips to the hero’s collarbone. She stayed there for a moment, allowing herself a second to compose the rage that still bubbled in her veins at the thought of Helen anywhere near a conversion therapist. She took a deep breath of her flowery perfume and drew back to catch her eyes once more.

 

“While your husband definitely scares the shit out of me, I don’t think I could’ve let him leave without saying something. It was my only chance, considering that if he ever comes to see me again it probably means that he’ll be breaking all of my bones in half like a candy bar.”

 

Helen cringed at the visual. “Did he threaten you?”

 

“Oh, only a lot,” Evelyn waved off sarcastically.

 

Helen leaned down to press her lips against hers, and mumbled, “I’m sorry, sweetheart.”

 

Evelyn wanted to remain put-out, but with the feeling of Helen molded against her, and the soft give of her lips against her own, she couldn’t do anything but melt into the couch cushions like warm honey and blissfully let the rest of the world blow up around them if it so pleased.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunday Surprise after such a massive reaction to the last chapter because I spoil you all like I would probably spoil my kids if I had any. For all of you awaiting the fluff, there is more where this chapter came from! Thanks for reading and for indulging my headcannons on Tumblr. Much love, and see you guys on Tuesday!


	11. Slowly

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn starts taking steps to get herself back on track, and domesticity ensues.

As it turns out, Evelyn didn’t miss exercising as much as she thought she had. Sweat slid down her forehead and dripped off of the tip of her nose as she completed her twentieth push-up. Something bitter and agitated curled in her chest upon remembering that she used to be able to knock out twenty with barely a problem.

 

She supposed that this was what she got for scrapping all of her active habits when she got arrested. There was an in-house gym on the second floor of the mansion, right across the hall from the guest bedroom, which she hadn’t necessarily _avoided_ , more like she hadn’t thought about utilizing for obvious reasons.

 

Her perpetual drunkenness and depression being the largest of them.

 

Now, though, she was determined to get herself back in shape. Her self assessment in the mirror the other day was wake up call enough, but Helen noticing and worrying over her as well? It had a fire lit beneath her like never before, and she steeled herself as she pushed through five more excruciating push-ups before collapsing onto the black mat beneath her. Her sweat and body heat left damp smears on the foamy mat, and her head pounded with the exertion. She turned her face slightly to look at the manual treadmill she had run on for nearly half an hour just moments before. It was old, one that she had enlisted Helen to help her pull out of the basement since her high powered electric one had been confiscated along with all of her other technology. The faith they had in her to create a weapon of mass destruction out of practically nothing was still astounding, though not unflattering. They were probably right to tread carefully.

 

“ _Ev_?” Helen called from downstairs.

 

Evelyn took a deep breath to try and slow her heart rate before weakly calling back out.

 

“What?”

 

Helen’s voice was closer the next time she said anything, and Evelyn could hear her footsteps coming up the carpeted stairs because the wooden flooring beneath them still creaked.

 

“Your lunch is ready,” she said, peeking her head in the doorway. Her maroon v-neck shirt complimented the way that the overhead light hit the auburn of her hair just then, and Evelyn found herself staring before she shook her head a bit and pushed herself up off of the floor.

 

Things between herself and Helen had changed a bit following their newfound freedom to explore their relationship more entirely. These changes weren’t bad ones by any means, merely… different. There was no thrill lost in their interactions, nothing along the lines of having only felt so impassioned by each other because of the looming threat of a forbidden affair, but there also was no sort of explosion that knocked the planet off its axis when they rejoined either.

 

They simply _were_.

 

It was as if they had always been together this way. They were a bit domestic and crooned over each other like any new couple would, sure, but nothing about it felt like all of those romance stories Evelyn had read when she was younger. The stars didn’t magically align, and she wasn’t writing love poems late into the night or anything like that, but damn it if having Helen so limitlessly didn’t just make her feel _lighter._

 

She brushed her hands off on her running shorts and smiled at the gentle-looking woman that stood in the doorway, taking several steps toward her until they were face to face.

 

Helen looked down at her fondly, reaching her hand out to brush sweat from beneath her eye. Her thumb lingered against Evelyn’s cheekbone for an extended moment, a thoughtful look on her face.

 

Evelyn propped her forearm up on the doorway and leaned against it in her fatigue, searching Helen’s perplexed face for a bit before caving.

 

“What are you thinking about?”

 

Helen’s thumb brushed softly up and down the skin there, her dark eyes searching.

 

“I can't look at you?”

 

Evelyn scoffed, rolling her eyes with no genuine annoyance behind it.

 

“Of course you can, they’re your eyes, I just want to know what’s happening in that head of yours.”

 

Helen shook her head, drawing away after placing a kiss to the corner of Evelyn’s lips. “Nothing. Come on, let’s eat.”

 

Baked chicken and salad awaited the two on the island counter, the meat still steaming on the plate that it was served on.

 

“I tried to guess which plates were the least expensive so that if anything happened I wouldn’t go into debt trying to pay you back,” Helen laughed nervously, squeezing onto Evelyn’s hand where she had taken it going down the stairs.

 

“Which part of me looks like I would let you pay for anything?” Evelyn asked, lifting an eyebrow up at her guest. Helen turned and looked into her eyes, matching her exact expression.

 

“Let me? I think you’re forgetting that no one _lets_ me do anything.” The tone of her voice suggested something soft and flirtatious, and it settled into the pit of Evelyn’s stomach warmly.

 

“Oh, really? Last I checked, _I_ was in control in _my_ house,” she said, voice lowering to match Helen’s.

 

The hero’s hand released hers as her arm snapped out and wrapped around her arms and waist more times than Evelyn could keep up with, not tight enough to restrict her breathing, but just enough to keep her from getting away. The limb yanked her inward until she was flush against Helen’s warm body, nearly nose to nose with her. Evelyn’s heart stuttered in her chest before pounding erratically.

 

“Who’s in control now?” she whispered against Evelyn’s lips before releasing her entirely and stepping toward the food as if nothing had happened. Evelyn stood dazed and overwhelmed in the same spot before Helen’s hand stretched across the island to snap in front of her face.

 

“Snap out of it, the chicken will get cold,” Helen teased with a bright laugh from the other side of the kitchen, taking a knife to the meat and cutting it up to put into the salad bowl before fixing two plates.

 

They sat down beside each other on the bar stools, forks in hand as they shoveled Helen’s freshly made lunch into their mouths. The mansion was comfortably silent aside from the sounds of their chewing for a stretch of time, and Evelyn found herself enjoying the subtle domesticity of such simple actions. She caught herself glancing over at Helen ever so often, wondering what she was thinking as the hero propped her chin up in her palm and held her fork suspended partially between her mouth and her salad with a dazed look in her eyes.

 

“Alright,” Evelyn sighed after a while, “what’s got you distracted today? Seriously.”

 

Helen blinked out of her reverie before turning those wide, dark eyes onto her. An apologetic smile made its way to her face, and her cheeks visibly darkened with pink.

 

“You’re gonna laugh,” she said.

 

Evelyn quirked an eyebrow at the assumption, turning her torso slightly toward Helen to encourage more eye contact, signaling her undivided attention. “If I do then I promise it’ll just be a little bit.”

 

Helen reached over with a speed entirely unanticipated by the woman beside her and smacked Evelyn on the arm.

 

“I’m being serious!”

 

Evelyn chuckled, wincing a bit from the attack. She tended to forget how goddamn _strong_ Helen was.

 

“Alright, alright. Now tell me what’s wrong, please?” She asked, spearing a piece of lettuce and chicken together and twirling it around in a bit of the ranch dressing drizzled into the mixture.

 

“I’ve just been thinking… about us… and—“ Helen stopped speaking for a moment, maybe to gather her thoughts into a coherent order before she continued. She drew her bottom lip into her mouth with uncertainty.

 

“What do we _do_?” She asked with a bit more weight behind the last word than it would have initially held. Evelyn squinted at her curiously, one eyebrow crawling upward as she eyed Helen.

 

“What do we do?” Evelyn repeated.

 

“You know… like what are you comfortable with doing… together?” Helen’s face was steadily turning pink until the color spilled down her neck and flooded her ears.

 

Realization dawned on Evelyn immediately upon seeing her reaction, and a slow smile spread on her face in utter amusement over seeing Helen so flustered.

 

Almost as if she was rushing to speak before Evelyn could unleash any one of the teasing comments on the tip of her tongue, Helen burst forward with an explanation.

 

“It’s just that I’ve never _been with_ a woman before, and you’ve said that you’ve never been in a relationship at all— so I’m just wondering what our boundaries are. I’m trying to be a mature adult here, so I’d appreciate it if you would take whatever comment you were about to say and kindly put it back.”

 

Evelyn smothered her laughter by shoving the forkful of salad into her mouth, chewing it thoughtfully and swallowing it down along with her mirth. The last thing that she wanted was for Helen to feel ridiculed for asking such a genuine question. It was sweet of her, really, and if she was being honest, she had been contemplating the same thing last night as she laid in bed waiting impatiently for sleep to come to her. It had embraced her more willingly that night than in the past, and she took it as a sign of progress even if the bags under her eyes still suggested otherwise.

 

“Well… what are _you_ comfortable with?” She asked, turning her eyes upon Helen’s out-of-her-depth expression.

 

“I asked you first,” she countered.

 

Evelyn dropped her head forward a bit, eyeing her in exasperation from beneath her eyelashes.

 

“Frankly? I don’t care, I’m really just happy to—“

 

“ _Wait_ ,” Helen cut her off, holding one hand outward that stopped Evelyn from speaking as much as the word did, “does this mean you’ve never had sex before?”

 

Evelyn gritted her teeth at the question, feeling heat suffuse in her cheeks. “Excuse you?”

 

Helen raised her other hand as well, dropping her fork down onto the counter so that both could be held up in surrender out in front of her body.

 

“Call it healthy curiosity,” she smiled, and Evelyn was sure that it was _supposed_ to be reassuring, though it felt like she was being made fun of.

 

“If you _must_ know…” Evelyn huffed, feeling the heat in her cheeks spread to her neck. She stabbed at her salad to avoid making eye contact, “No, I haven’t,” she admitted quietly.

 

The silence that she got in response only served to make her face feel overwhelmingly warmer, and when she finally looked up at the woman beside her, Helen was looking at her like the world’s most precious person, eyes alight with something _deeply_ and emotionally reverent. How one would stare at a begging puppy, perhaps. How Winston stared at the television screen when they were little, Superheroes’ theme songs blasting from the tinny speakers.

 

“What? Why are you looking a—“

 

Without warning, Helen’s lips were crushing against hers with bruising force, and Evelyn found that whatever it was she was about to say had evaporated from her mind just as quickly. Her eyes fluttered closed, allowing herself to be engulfed by the softness of Helen’s lips and, after a moment, the hesitant prodding of her tongue.

 

Feeling her heartbeat in her temples, Evelyn parted her lips and allowed for the further exploration of each other’s mouths. Her entire body felt as if it had begun radiating heat, searing her skin with a temperature that she was sure would kill her.

 

Her hand relaxed from where it had clenched around her fork on the table, dropping the utensil from out of her deathly grip and moving to caress the back of Helen’s neck with it instead. She ran her fingers through the silken strands there, pulling her closer until she felt a pressure against her thighs that said Helen had stood from her seat to stand between them.

 

Hands that were not her own clenched onto her biceps, and Helen’s thumbs dug unto her arms with the excess intensity of the kiss.

 

When they pulled away from each other, the look in Helen’s eyes was one that Evelyn wished she had caught on camera film. Pupils blown and eyes lidded, she stared down at Evelyn breathlessly. Her cheeks were stained red, lips holding more blood in them than usual with the force of their kiss.

 

“What was that for?” Evelyn asked after a beat. Her voice had grown hoarse, and she cleared her throat in an attempt to restore it.

 

“I couldn’t help it,” Helen admitted sheepishly, dropping her gaze down at the barely-there space between them until Evelyn repeated the action Helen had done to her so many times and tilted her chin back up.

 

“I don’t… I’m confused,” Evelyn murmured dazedly, still trying to recover from the pounding of her heart against her rib cage and the flames licking at her skin.

 

“Am I the first person you’ve ever been with... like this?” Helen asked quietly.

 

Evelyn, in a rare moment of demureness, shrugged her shoulders, fighting everything in her that just wanted to hide her face from the relentlessly searching gaze of the woman standing between her legs.

 

She had a sudden thought of what Helen would feel like beneath her hands without the barrier of cloth between them. She thought of how she would dig her fingers into soft and supple flesh, coaxing a moan out of her similar to the one that disrupted their very first kiss. Only this time, it would be followed by more and more, building into a steady crescendo of—

 

“Evelyn?” Helen’s voice yanked her back into the present like a splash of ice water, and though a deep gasp rushed through her lips and expanded her chest, she still felt as though she couldn’t breathe.

 

“Um, yes— yeah, you’re the first,” Evelyn said, clearing her throat and swallowing to rid herself of the dryness that had accumulated there. Helen was eying her strangely, but not in a way that was unpleasant.

 

There was a predatory look in her gaze that reminded her of a stalking lioness staring down her prey. Evelyn was alarmed by how her body was responding to such energy pouring off of the other woman, having always pictured herself being the one doing the hunting.

 

“I guess I’ll have to make a good first impression, won’t I?” Helen murmured into the hairsbreadth of space between them, and a shiver snaked down Evelyn’s spine. Tired of being manipulated, Evelyn stood abruptly. She turned her body until her arms trapped Helen between her torso and the island counter, taking pleasure in the small gasp that left Helen’s lips. Careful to move their plates out of the way, Evelyn lifted Helen by the thighs, surprisingly light in her arms, and placed her on the edge of the counter, standing between the hero’s legs instead. 

 

“You’ll have to work for it,” Evelyn felt a cocky smirk appear on her face, "I have high expectations." She felt herself be egged on by the deep red blush staining Helen’s entire face and neck.

 

Leaning forward and tilting her face up, she peppered slow, devastatingly slow, kisses up from the point of Helen’s V-neck to her throat. She was careful not to get carried away; she knew that Bob had given them the reluctant green light to mostly do whatever they pleased, but she still felt strange about leaving marks on another man’s wife. Perhaps she wouldn’t have cared had she still been back in that self-destructive spiral of vindictive energy, but after the conversation they’d had only a few days ago, she couldn’t bring herself to spite him. It would be pointless to do so, not to mention she would just be spitting in his face after he was miraculously open enough to allow them this much peace to begin with.

 

Helen’s breaths slowly grew shallower and quicker, shaking with every exhale as her dexterous fingers clenched around the edge of the counter. Her knuckles paled with the pressure, and eventually she released her grip to push Evelyn’s shoulders back.

 

“Wait,” Helen panted, her eyes screwed shut.

 

Evelyn pulled away, feeling her eyebrows furrow over her eyes as she did a quick scan of Helen’s body and ensured that nothing had gone wrong.

 

“What? What did I do?” She asked.

 

“ _Nothing_ — nothing bad, it’s just,” Helen shook her head as if to clear it and opened her eyes finally. Her blown pupils were trained on Evelyn’s face, and the shorter woman ran her palms up and down Helen’s jean-clad thighs soothingly.

 

“I know I talk a big game, but… do you mind if we go slow?” Her voice sounded small, as if she were terrified asking such a valid question would turn Evelyn away from her. All that Evelyn could do in response was reach up and draw Helen’s face closer to her own, leaving a gentle kiss on the skin between her cheek and her lips.

 

“Of course we can,” she said, “and don’t feel bad for asking… I just thought this was what you wanted.”

 

Helen looked down at her with fondness in her gaze, reaching a hand up to gently scratch her nails back and forth through Evelyn’s trimmed hair.

 

“I don’t want to do anything just because we can now, you know? This is still relatively new… for the both of us. Let’s just see where this goes. For now, though, I really just like spending time with you.” Her voice had grown softer the more that she spoke, and by the end it was as if the words only would ever exist in the finite amount of space between the two of them.

 

Another thought occurred to Evelyn though, when considering just how much time she had been spending with her.

 

“Hey, Helen…” Evelyn began hesitantly. Her hands stilled their rubbing back and forth on the hero’s thighs, instead drumming her fingers there.

 

“Hm?”

 

“Do your kids know about this whole… arrangement you have with me and Robert?” Evelyn felt like she was overstepping her boundaries asking such a sensitive question, but the last thing that she wanted was for some other element of Helen’s life to suffer just so that they could have a few stolen moments together.

 

Helen sighed, cheeks ballooning and then deflating as she released the air over Evelyn’s head. The air shifted the hairs sticking out from the center.

 

“We haven’t figured out how we want to bring it up to them, yet… or if we should do it at all.”

 

Evelyn twisted her lips to the side as she considered the latter option, ultimately shaking her head and looking at Helen with uncertainty.

 

“I don’t know much about kids, but I’m pretty sure they don’t like being lied to. If you keep lying and they find out… they’re gonna be _pretty_ angry.” Evelyn didn’t even want to consider if they not only found out about the open marriage late, but also _who_ their mother was seeing for all of that time. She nearly winced just thinking about the potential fallout.

 

“No, I know. And you’re right. I told Bob that same thing, but I think he just has something about his ego that won’t…” Helen’s hand in her hair went still as she grasped for the right words, “won’t let him admit that their mother was ever interested someone else. They’re smart kids. They’d realize something was going on eventually, but I just don’t think they’d understand.” Helen huffed, her shoulders deflating and her hand slowly sliding out from Evelyn’s short tresses.

 

“Yeah…” Evelyn conceded, “just don’t wait too long, okay? It makes me—“ she cut herself off before she could finish. It was a force of habit, stopping herself from revealing emotions that were too close to herself. She trusted Helen, though, and the woman that she stood between the thighs of had gone above and beyond to earn every ounce of honesty that Evelyn had to give. She chewed on her bottom lip for a long moment, staring boldly into Helen’s curious and patient eyes, before continuing her thought.

 

“It makes me feel… weird… to think that they’ll never accept… me,” Evelyn admitted haltingly. She felt her face burn with a heat that she was positive must have glowed on her face.

 

“That maybe they’ll find out exactly who it is their mom’s been seeing outside of their parents’ marriage and their first reaction will be… fear,” she said. Her voice was low, and she struggled greatly, but she maintained eye contact the entire time that she admitted this.

 

Helen’s face crumpled in sympathy and she lifted her hands back to Evelyn’s face to cup her jaw between them delicately, as if she were a precious item previously lost to the world and just recently rediscovered.

 

“I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. When we do tell them, I promise you,” Helen’s eyes burned with fierce protectiveness, “they’ll know enough about the real you to not be afraid.”

 

Evelyn chuckled darkly, wanting to speak aloud what the nagging voice in the back of her head had been telling her for months now, that the part of her that did all of those things to the Parr family _was_ the real her.

 

She _was_ the Screenslaver, despite having never actually donned the suit. She _was_ dangerous. It _was_ right to have her secured in a monitored location and to have all of her technology confiscated. She _was_ a viable threat, and those kids wouldn’t be wrong for assuming so.

 

It wouldn’t just make her feel weird, it would make her feel _sad_ … but it wouldn’t be unfounded by any means, and that was ultimately all her own fault.

 

Instead of saying all of that though, Evelyn just flashed Helen a small, thankful smile and wrapped her arms around her slim torso. As her face buried into her chest, she let out the tension that had been building in her back and finally released her after a long moment of Helen’s hands rubbing soothing lines up and down her spine.

 

“Can we finish eating now, or do you wanna make out some more?” Evelyn asked after a beat, and Helen shoved her shoulder playfully.

 

“We can make out some more after you finish all of your food,” she chuckled.

 

“Was that a proposition?” Evelyn asked with a teasing tone taking over the previous anxiety in her voice.

 

“Yes, it was. And you’re going to take me up on it because you can’t help yourself,” Helen said matter-of-factly. Her warm eyes shined down at her with such affection that Evelyn felt her insides warm like hot chocolate on her family's old winter vacations to the lodge.

 

Allowing the words that Helen said to finally sink in, though, Evelyn stared up at her with a dramatically high raised eyebrow, shoving her shoulder back with two fingers.

 

“Alright, very grown up. Let me down, Ev. You aren’t the only one who wants the prize at the end of lunch,” Helen grinned cheekily, and Evelyn felt her neck grow hot.

  
_Slowly,_ she thought, _take things slowly_. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here's a bit of a fluffy filler before the plot moves forward in the next two chapters. They're a little intense, but trust me it's worth it in the end :) Happy Tuesday, loves! Thanks for reading <3


	12. Emergency

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone goes too far, and Evelyn has every intention of making them pay.

That night, long since Helen had returned to her own home for the day, Evelyn had been sound asleep.

 

Rest had found her quickly, and it did so especially if she clutched the pillow that Helen had been propped up against as they sat and talked for hours in bed to her chest. She was still clutching the floral scented memory foam in its satin gray casing to her body when she blearily awoke to the sound of her doorbell being pressed on multiple times back to back, not even allowing the full chime to play out before it was being pressed once more. The deafening sound drilled into her eardrums, and she laid there with her hands clutching over her ears for a long while before angrily throwing the comforter back and wordlessly yelling at the air.

 

For as little sleep as she was able to get, when she finally slipped into a deep rest that was not plagued by nightmares or waking up every half hour, the last thing in the world that she wanted was to be disturbed. The fury she felt toward being roused was visceral, making her entire body vibrate with white-hot rage for whoever was on the other side of that door. If she got more time added to her house arrest for beating some stupid kid who thought it would be funny to harass Metroville’s wealthiest criminal into a paste, then so be it. Her half-asleep thoughts perhaps would have alarmed her had she been more conscious and less infuriated, but for now they were the only things that gave her enough energy to march toward the front door, fists balled at her sides.

 

Turning the three locks beneath her hand, she had words set at a growl already dripping acidically from her tongue before the door even opened fully.

 

“What the _fuck_ could you possibly want at two in the—“

 

The gasp that tore through Evelyn’s chest nearly choked her as she took an automatic step backward, clutching her hand to her mouth. Whatever cloud of hazy, barely conscious anger that had been pushing her one step closer to homicide evaporated and left her painfully awake, and painfully terrified.

 

“Son of a bitch,” she whispered shakily, taking in the unconscious figure draped onto her doorstep as if it had taken its last steps there and collapsed, unable to get up.

 

Evelyn knelt down and grunted as she hefted the dead weight of one Supersuit-clad Elastigirl into her arms.

 

The night sky was pitch black, not a star in its depths due to the city’s light pollution. Evelyn’s mansion was far enough away enough from the street with all of the land that surrounded it that the only lights that illuminated her mansion were the motion sensored ones outside of her front door and in the backyard. The yellow fluorescent lighting exposed Helen’s sickly pallor, and Evelyn grunted again at the limp weight in her arms as she fully lifted her bridal style and carried her into the house. She was gentle with her steps, clutching the unconscious body close to her chest as her hands were only stopped from shaking by being otherwise occupied. She lowered Helen with excruciating tenderness down onto the couch and propped her head up against the arm rest. After the hero was out of her arms, she rushed back to the door and scanned the general area outside of her home before shutting it and locking back up.

 

Speed walking back to Helen’s side, she kneeled beside her and brushed her mussed, damp hair out of her face. Several auburn strands clung to her face and neck with sweat and still-damp blood. Evelyn’s stomach rolled at the thought that it was Helen’s, and she couldn’t bring herself to give a damn about if it was seeping into her expensive couch because she could get another one of those, but Helen was irreplaceable. If anything ever happened to her that somehow separated them forever—

 

Evelyn’s fierce protectiveness reared its head, and she was on her feet and headed toward the bathroom for the first-aid kit without even thinking about it. Moving as if on auto-pilot, Evelyn returned to the unconscious body in the crimson Incredibles suit draped like a ragdoll across her couch.

 

After a further general inspection, the blood on her face and neck _seemed_ to be all that there was. Gripping the elastic of her uniform between her thumb and forefinger, Evelyn made an impressed noise with the material it was made of— something that she recognized to be virtually indestructible, and was unexplainably thankful for. She made a mental note to contact Edna Mode when she was released— a partnership between them both could be something magnificent, allowing that the fashion designer would ever have her.

 

She thought about what they could possibly create together to take her mind off of what she was doing. Turning Helen’s limp body over onto her side so that she had access to the zipper at her back, she undid the suit. It took a lot of effort, especially because the rubbery material was caught onto her skin with sweat, but eventually she was able to peel the costume off of every limb, setting it gently on the floor as she scanned her body for any further damage. There was nothing immediately obvious that was wrong with the rest of her, but clearly something was plaguing her body by the way that her temperature was spiked and how she was sweating so profusely. This was no ‘I just finished fighting crime’ perspiration; this high of a fever signaled that the body was trying to kill off something within itself.

 

“God, Helen, what did you _do_ ,” Evelyn murmured to the unconscious woman in front of her. “You’re always so careful… why couldn’t you be more fucking _careful_ ,” she whispered in anguish.

 

She reached into the first-aid kit and doused a piece of gauze in antiseptic, brushing the strip over two long gashes that ran from the bottom of Helen’s jaw to the side of her cheek. She gently removed the mask and set it atop the small crumpled heap of her suit. Evelyn gently wiped the rest of the blood from her face and throat with the same piece, tossing it onto the coffee table behind her as she assessed the rest of Helen’s body again.

 

It was a testament to her fear how entirely unaffected she was by seeing Helen wearing nothing but compression shorts and a sports bra. There was no hesitancy or awkwardness, she just needed to make sure that Helen wasn’t on the cusp of death.

 

Evelyn’s mind was in full protection mode as she turned over every limb to check for further damage. She found nothing. Nothing besides a far too warm body and dark, sunken closed eyes.

 

Her frustration at not being able to figure out what happened to her because the woman in question was knocked out skyrocketed as she realized she could do nothing but _hope_ that nothing fatal was in her system.

 

She let out a hysterical mix between a bark of laughter and a tearless sob.

 

If she had access to her in-house lab, the one that the police dismantled and confiscated upon her release to house arrest, she probably would have been able to throw something together that at least let her check Helen’s vitals, if not determine the source of her body’s reaction, within two hours tops. She glared down at the monitor around her ankle with misdirected wrath, feeling the hot sting of tears behind her eyes that were borne from utter helplessness. If something irreversible happened to Helen on her couch while she was unable to do a single thing about it…

 

She stopped the thought before it could go any further and instead lowered her head down until her forehead pressed into Helen’s firm stomach. It was slick with moisture, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care.

 

She suddenly cursed whoever’s utterly _idiotic_ idea it was to leave her devoid of any contact to the outside world aside from pre-approved visitors. She remembered at the beginning of their arrangement to set her up in her home that Winston had questioned what would happen in the event of an emergency, and that _stupid_ man sitting across from them with his cold eyes and his business suit had said, _“Let’s hope there_ is _no emergency. No way in hell we’re letting this little lady anywhere near a phone line. Wouldn’t want her getting any ideas about,”_ he had grasped at straws, searching for the absolutely ridiculous thing that came out of his mouth next, “ _audio hypnosis_.”

 

It wasn’t even that audio hypnosis was implausible. The development of binaural beats to lull the brain into different waves of the sleep cycle and create heightened suggestibility in the subconscious was a fascinating one she had absolutely heard of— but denying her access to outside help in case of an emergency because she might utilize it to exact revenge? There had to be something illegal about that, right?

 

Anyway, Winston had been unable to convince him otherwise.

 

And now here she was.

 

“Why did you come _here_ ,” Evelyn ground out, squeezing her eyes shut against the tears that were threatening to fall now that her face was angled downward.

 

“Why wouldn’t you go to a hospital? You know I can’t _help you_.”

 

As she laid there, breaths hitching every so often with repressed cries, she seriously contemplated destroying the monitor around her ankle so that an alert would go off and the police would show up to perhaps be able to take Helen to a hospital. Before she could move to go find the sharpest object she could to slice the thin part of the anklet in half, the Supersuit discarded on the floor beside her began beeping quickly, a bright white light flashing to the sound. Evelyn leaned back on her heels and turned her head over to the strange noise and tone, feeling something eerie creep up the back of her neck.

 

While her head was turned, the sound of shattering glass made her arch up and shield Helen’s body out of pure instinct, catching shards on the back of her neck while the rest slid down the outside of her striped pajama set.

 

When Evelyn finally chanced a glance upward, a familiarly tall and imposing figure was stepping through the massive window frame.

 

“ _Robert_?” She asked, feeling her face scrunch up as she sat there, at a loss for words, while Bob Parr rushed into the room in his own Supersuit. The device in his hands flashed with the same rhythm as the Supersuit on the floor, and suddenly she realized that he must have been looking for Helen after possibly getting separated on a mission.

 

“Get out of my way,” he said lowly, bodily moving her from beside his wife and lifting Helen up in his bulging arms.

 

“What— is she okay? What happened to her? What the hell were you two _doing_?” She asked, her voice steadily rising with worry. When Evelyn had yet to receive a reply after a few impossibly long moments, Mr. Incredible merely leaning down to swipe up Helen’s suit and mask from off of the floor and beginning to retreat back to the window he busted through, she snapped.

 

“God damn it, _answer me_!” She yelled, shoving his bicep in her wave of panic and frustration coming to a boiling point. He whirled around on her, teeth bared as if he were seconds away from grinding her to dust. She flinched backward automatically, bringing her forearm up to shield her face, when his menacing expression fell into one of regret— shame. She lowered it back down slowly, feeling the tremble in her hands return once more and kicking herself for lashing out at him.

 

Bob’s tense shoulders fell slightly, hunching protectively over his wife. Evelyn watched his demeanor shift from determined to devastated in seconds, and couldn’t help but to empathize with him in that moment.

 

“We were doing a stake out on Mimick and got caught,” he said, sounding as ashamed as if it had been some sort of miniscule, idiotic slip up that had given them away.

 

“He’d just had an encounter with Bubonic earlier this week— his powers incapacitate people by giving them symptoms of just… terrible illness. We knew this, which was why we were _careful_ ,” he stopped himself from getting too riled up, forcing a deep breath before continuing in a lower tone.

 

“From what I know, it usually wears off before it turns fatal, but I need to get her to a hospital _now_. If you don’t mind,” his voice turned steely, blue eyes seeming nearly black as he stood in front of the outdoor lights that shone in through her broken window, bathing himself and Helen in shadow.

 

All of the fight dropped from Evelyn’s shoulders and she took an instinctual step toward where Helen lie in his arms before stopping herself.

 

“Hurry,” she said, clenching her teeth against the anger she felt at not being able to help her and the terror that wracked through her body at seeing Helen look so broken down and weak.

 

Bob turned on his heel without another word and jogged back to the window that he had burst through, reluctantly shooting back an apology about the damage and a promise that he would make sure an update about the status of Helen’s health got back to her.

 

When he was gone, and the cool spring air of the night breezed in through her floor to ceiling window pane, she shivered, wrapping her arms around herself as he disappeared into the dark outside of the radius of motion lights.

 

A sigh tore through her lips as she crawled up onto the couch that Helen had just been passed out on and curled up into the warm spot that her body heat had created.

 

She stared long and hard at the bloodstained gauze that sat on her coffee table, feeling fear clutch around her airway until she could hardly breathe, until she was practically choking on what she now realized was her greatest fear: losing her.

 

She didn’t know what she would do without Helen, and she didn’t want to think about it either, so she forced her legs over the side of the couch not even five minutes after laying down and walked over to the bar in the corner of the room.

 

She felt empty.

 

She felt her mind pulling away from the panic that surged through her veins, and the only thing to finish taking the edge off completely was the half a glass of whiskey that she poured into one of the many glasses lined up on the edge of the wooden counter. The burn of it down her throat was welcomed as she threw some of it back, far too familiar with the taste to even wince at it anymore. She leaned down with her forearms onto the edge of the bar and let her head fall forward, closing her eyes and only seeing Helen’s sickly face.

 

Her slightly sunken eyes.

 

Evelyn threw back the rest of it and hissed as so much of it went down her throat at once, shaking her head sharply and falling into the warmth that spread throughout her chest like it would save her from spiraling again.

 

Slamming the glass back onto the counter with far too much force, she wandered back over to the couch and threw herself down into the lush cushions, burying her head against the armrest where Helen’s had been.

 

Eventually, her eyes got droopy as she glared at the offending, bloody material of the gauze still glaring back at her from the coffee table until, finally, she dozed off.

 

Evelyn fell asleep with nightmares plaguing her subconscious.

 

* * *

 

Sunrise came with obnoxiously loud chirping birds, louder than usual.

 

Which made sense because usually they were _outside_ of her home.

 

Evelyn wrenched her eyes open to see several brightly colored birds flitting around her living room, some perched atop the statue that Winston had gifted her two years ago, and others flying from surface to surface. One was hopping with little feet across her bar counter, right where her glass sat from the night before, and she sat up straight.

 

She could only laugh— throwing her hands up in the air and sounding only a little bit crazed— in disbelief to keep from yelling out in frustration and cursing _Mr. Incredible_ with nearly every vile word she had in her back pocket. With those thoughts came the worry for Helen that had only barely ebbed in her fitful slumber.

 

Evelyn threw one last disbelieving glance back at the shattered window, and careful to step around the glass littering the floor, she shuffled to the bathroom. She couldn’t help but think of the fat lot of good her locked doors would do for her now as she turned the shower onto the highest temperature and watched as the rain-like water fell from the showerhead that extended from the ceiling in a large, flat square shape.

 

After the room was suffused with a thick fog of steam, and she stripped down to nothing, Evelyn slid the shower door open and stepped inside. She allowed her eyes to slide shut as the scalding water slowly but surely relaxed her tensed body. While her vision was blackened, Evelyn could only see the ashen face of a violently ill _Elastigirl_ behind her eyelids. With a shudder, she opened her eyes again and reached over for the loofah and soap hanging up neatly within the spacious glass shower stall.

 

“...fuck am I supposed to do, just sit here and _wait_?” Evelyn’s thoughts had slipped into an audible sentence as she grumbled and scrubbed her body down. She found a patch of dried blood on her wrist and scowled at it in contempt as if it was personally responsible for her helplessness before rubbing at it until her skin was raw.

 

Exiting the shower and drying her body down until she was able to slip into her robe without any issue, Evelyn allowed the worry she had been trying to stave off to seep into her every pore.

 

She thought about her instinct to destroy the house arrest bracelet around her ankle in order to potentially have gotten help to come to her and Helen within moments, and the depth of her feelings for this woman, this astoundingly, genuinely _pure_ woman, hit her less like a blow to the chest and more like the sensation of slowly slipping into the calming jets of a hot bath. The emotion overtook her anxiety and squashed it until it was no longer an inferno of doubt and fear, but a flicker of embers floating away and blinking out of existence.

 

She was calm with love.

 

It righted everything in her mind— in her _life_ — until it all finally clicked into place, until it all finally _made sense_.

 

She loved Helen so much that it righted her— not her depression and anxiety per-se, those things were innate to her and prone to fluctuating as they pleased, she knew— but Evelyn, at her core, felt whole in that moment of realization.

 

She looked down at her ankle monitor, her face blank, and blinked at it twice before sprinting into action. Her bare feet took her through the house, slamming against marble flooring and sinking into carpet alike as she made her way to the front room. Toeing around fallen shards of glass, she stepped through the shattered window and scanned the outer wall of her home for the electrical box that controlled the motion-sensored lights outside, tugging her thin robe tighter around herself. She paced through the grass as she considered what she would need in order to see her plan through.

 

The police may have been thorough, confiscating everything that she could have used to escape somehow, but where true genius lie, they could never be thorough enough.

 

High noon had come and gone with no word from Bob as Evelyn worked across her dining room table in the falling darkness of nighttime, only the occasional sounds of a bird, a fly, or a mosquito that had wandered into her home through the windows to break up the silence. A makeshift screwdriver was in hand that she had painstakingly honed with a hammer and a kitchen knife. Her device was nearly complete, and she could hardly form a thought through the calm focus that had settled throughout her body. She moved on auto-pilot, as if back in her own lab and zipping through invention after invention as she always had. She would have reveled in how good it felt to be back to herself if she weren’t damning the consequences of whatever may be the fallout of this direct defiance of the law, but she would do it for Helen.

 

She would do anything for Helen.

 

Sitting back after working the finishing touches, she looked down at only one of the devices she had created that would act as a duplicate signal of her ankle monitor amid several other scavenged and manipulated parts from around her home. She would need to activate the one on the table as soon as the one around her ankle was offline, and she only had one shot at it. While she could have easily grabbed a pair of bolt cutters and laid into the thinner band around her ankle, the instant alert that would have set off wouldn’t have bought her enough time to kill the signal. She needed the bulky box of it at the side of her ankle destroyed until the tiny red light was out, and she just needed the new signal to say that she was at the very table she had spent nearly entire days drunkenly draped over in the past. The short while that she would be gone would barely hold a candle to how long her monitor would have said she’d been in that spot before.

 

Grabbing the hammer she had scavenged from the depths of her basement off of the table, she held her ankle out and looked down at the monitor warily. There was a slight fear in her chest about the things that could go wrong— namely how badly it would hurt to hammer the damn thing off of her body— but also what would happen if she failed. Shaking her head to clear her doubt, she raised the tool over her head and brought it down, with medium strength, against the anklet.

 

The blow made her cry out in pain, the hard casing of the bracelet smashing against her bone with the force of the hit, and unfortunately it didn’t budge. She would have to be quick because any tampering would send out an alert, and she needed the thing smashed to pieces before it could.

 

Sucking in a deep breath through her teeth that she clenched together with an intensity that hurt her jaw, she told herself to stop screwing around and just _hit it_. Her ankle would survive. She would have a limp, sure, but it was a small price to pay for freedom to help the woman who had so selflessly helped her for so long.

 

Raising the hammer again, she took several deep breaths, her face scrunching up in a wince before she even took a swing, and sliced it through the air, striking the black case that housed the signaling monitor until the box literally cracked in half and fell off of her body. Her hand shot out to activate the device on the table immediately, and Evelyn quickly took to the fallen anklet several more times even after the tiny red light blinked out of existence just to be sure.

 

She sat there for a long moment to collect herself and the pull back the inevitable tears of pain that had sprung to her eyes at the blow. She eyed the clock on the far wall. She would give it ten minutes. If no army of squad cars showed up to cart her away, then she was in the clear.

 

While she waited, Evelyn sprung to her feet, feeling the strike from the hammer in her ankle _loudly_ , but electing to ignore the shooting pain there while she sprinted to her bedroom. She tore through her dressers for a pair of simple jeans and a t-shirt, quickly changing her clothes before snatching up the bag she had pre-packed before working on her device. By the time she was back to the dining room, fourteen minutes had passed, and not a single soul was around to bodily throw her into federal prison.

 

With a low chuckle of appreciation for her own brilliance, she hiked the backpack over her shoulder and set out through the front door, a limp in her step.

 

The thought she’d had the other day when Helen said that her kids would know enough about the ‘real her’ to not be fearful came back with painful clarity as she rounded the estate to the far side of it. All of the things she had done to land her in trouble with the law to begin with _had_ been the real her, fueled by a dark and vindictive need to avenge the deaths of her parents and keep what happened to them from happening to anyone else. That same darkness gathered at the pit of her stomach now, strengthening her resolve as she made her way to the garage.

 

Mimick would be begging her to kill him when she was finished.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So how about this weather we're having?
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


	13. Helen of Troy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn hunts Mimick down.

Breaking out of her own home was the difficult part by miles, and Evelyn entered the passcodes that got her through the otherwise empty DevTech building with familiar ease. It took her only a few hours to construct what she needed, most of the parts having already been assembled from previous works, and merely needing to be tweaked a bit to fit her purpose. After a couple of hours, she stood in the center of her lab with her arms crossed over her chest, staring with pride down at the sleek metal power-dampener that she had fashioned into a collar. She ran her fingers over the cold device and shook her head in wonderment at her own genius.

 

She had grand plans for Mimick. 

 

The television in the corner of her lab rumbled lowly on the news channel, showing a blurry image of the man in question that still allowed for a fairly competent view of what he looked like. The stone-faced reporter explained that the villain was still at large after Elastigirl was left incapacitated to this moment. A low growl rumbled in the back of her throat as she snatched up the collar and shoved it into her backpack alongside several other gadgets she had thrown together as a fail-safe. Being powerless had its advantages, she supposed, when the target in question could only duplicate Super abilities. She grabbed the remote control from off of her work desk and pressed the power button to the television harshly, tossing it back to where she lifted it from and tugging her bag higher on her shoulders. With a flick of the light switch, her lab was bathed in darkness again, and she slipped out into the hallway to take the elevator back down to the ground floor.

 

On the way to her greatest guess for where he would strike next, if the news reports held any accuracy, she tried not to think about how she was falling into the category of a vigilante after all of the time that she spent looking down her nose at the exact thing she was doing now. This wasn’t for the greater good of the people, though. She wasn’t grandstanding like some obnoxious asshole in a cape, flexing her muscles and showing off her strange innate abilities, preening for the public’s worship.

 

Evelyn had a vendetta, and she was going to exact her retribution on that bastard if it was the last thing she ever did. He was a heretic casting blasphemy upon her sanctuary, and today would be his Judgement Day.

 

_ Helen of Troy _ flashed through her mind suddenly, bringing back countless hours she had spent as a child immersing herself in Greek mythology.

 

She sat on the roof of her parked vehicle in an empty parking lot, exactly across the street from the only bank in the city that the newscaster had said he hadn’t hit yet. She would’ve thought it to be a long shot, considering how recently he had already attacked, but if logic and cynicism had ever taught Evelyn anything, it was that evil was emboldened when when it was winning.

 

Mimick had taken down  _ Elastigirl _ for Christ’s sake, and she was still unresponsive to this moment. While the thought made something heavy and violent claw through Evelyn’s chest, it also gave her high chances that he would strike again just to show off.

 

She  _ hated  _ showboaters.

 

Sure enough, when Evelyn looked down at her gold watch for the eighth time that night, and it was nearing four o’clock in the morning, she saw activity up ahead. Her back straightened up from its previously slouched position, and she leaned forward a bit, squinting into the vaguely illuminated night.

 

The streetlamps went out suddenly, and she was bathed in darkness that made her heart rate spike. Quickly moving for her bag, she removed the binocular headset that acted as both a vision enhancer and night vision goggles and shoved the harness connecting it down over her head until she could see in muted green tones across the street with much better clarity. Next, she grabbed the collar and a second device that she slipped into the utility belt around her hips in case she needed her hands to be free. Uncrossing her legs, she crawled onto all fours before pushing herself to her feet and staring dead into the fresh black of night.

 

_ There. _

 

She saw a figure strolling up to the bank doors, an arrogant smile on his face as he whistled, slow and cheery. The sound made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up, and she huffed two deep breaths before hopping soundlessly down onto the asphalt of the parking lot. The ankle that she had beaten the monitor off of gave out a bit when she tried to stick her landing, and her yelp of pain was silent as she grit her teeth through it.

 

Crouching while running, she scurried to the other end of the parking lot, the one much closer to the street that the bank sat tall and proud on the other side of, and squatted behind two dumpsters. The scent of rotting garbage in Metroville’s spring humidity was nauseating, but she swallowed down her disgust and continued to pay attention to the target at hand. 

 

His hands and arms shimmered a bit before morphing into the size and bulk of Mr. Incredible’s, physically forcing the bank doors open with ease. Evelyn’s stomach turned as she watched him shift, and she didn’t want to imagine what duress his bones went through in order to take on such a form so suddenly. The alarm blared, naturally so, and after several moments inside, it halted. Evelyn couldn’t see what he did to silence the noise even with her enhanced goggles, and instead of worrying about it she hyped herself up to go sprint in behind him.

 

She didn’t have time to talk herself out of this. It was now or never.

 

She ran.

 

By the time he saw her, it was nearly too late.

 

Nearly.

 

He slunk out of her reach like a partially-filled water balloon going flat, and popped back up on the other side of her with an elastic fist that was flung toward her face. Evelyn ducked and rolled out of the way, landing on all fours and watching in sick fascination as he attempted to combine Bob and Helen’s powers to no avail. The weight of his hand and arm as he enlarged them to Mr. Incredible’s size was too heavy for the limp elasticity of it as well, and his hand fell flat to the ground like a dropped ball and chain. He stumbled a bit in surprise, and she smirked, rising to her feet and reaching for the stun gun-like ray she had put an extra kick into. It was built to be powerful enough to take down a Super with multiple stored abilities, and sat on the other side of her hip comfortably.

 

She leveled the gun at him and pulled the trigger. A neon green light shot out, but missed as he melted down to the ground again. Evelyn had rarely seen Helen’s powers used in this way, the tactic of flattening evasion, while in hand-to-hand combat. Generally, the hero saved that for working around structural obstacles. Cursing, Evelyn wobbled back to her feet, circling the taller villain and trying to hide the limp in her steps. The last thing that she needed was for him to play to her weakness.

 

“Who are you?” His voice was low and scrambled, like an audio manipulation that reminded her alarmingly of the voice she had used for the Screenslaver, except it was certainly coming from his own voice box. She grimaced at the sound, feeling something eerie and crawling go down the back of her neck when she heard it. Taking in her surroundings through the varying green shades of her eyewear, she tried to think of this encounter like a game of chess while he reformed himself back into his normal figure.

 

Moves and countermoves. That’s all this was.

 

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, raising the gun obviously toward his chest.

 

Just as she anticipated, he stretched across the space between them to grab it, and she deftly moved the gun out to her side and gripped his elastic wrist with her other hand, angling the weapon beneath where she held his arm and taking a clear shot at his stomach in one fluid motion. The neon green light illuminated the room briefly before she let go of the trigger.

 

Mimick dropped to his knees as he yelled out in shock. His eyes turned on her and glowed a faint color that only appeared as bright green in the goggles, attempting to use something else in his arsenal that could take her out, maybe. Perhaps he thought that she was a Super, and the glow was the sign that he was trying to absorb her nonexistent powers. Regardless of whatever it was he had tried to do, he failed. While he was on his hands and knees and trembling, she yanked the collar off of her waist and shoved it violently into his neck. It clamped shut under her hands, and a devious grin nearly split her face in half as his limb forcibly returned back to its initial length along his body.

 

She lowered herself onto the floor until they were eye to eye, and merely stared him down for a long moment before snatching him up by the throat with one hand. Her fingers clenched right below his jaw, sitting above the cold metal of the collar, and he choked out a gasp.

 

“You hurt someone very important to me,” Evelyn sighed. It was as if she were recounting the mundane events of a long, trivial day. She felt power at the tips of her fingers, knowing that he was at her mercy. Her tongue was thick with it.

 

She watched as he coughed and sputtered, his pale face turning steadily red. She tilted her head to the side, nodding as if having a conversation with him.

 

“Shh... I know. I know. It’s lucky you were arrogant enough to show up tonight. I almost thought I wouldn’t get the chance to get acquainted,” Evelyn smiled down into his bulging face, relishing how his lips formed words that were probably pleas to spare him, but he couldn’t grab enough air to make the words come out.

 

“Being under house arrest for so long  _ has  _ made me a bit rusty with people, though, and I already wasn’t that great at them before,” she chuckled wistfully, “but you’ll be patient, won’t you?”

 

She slammed him down into the marble floor of the bank’s lobby violently, watching the back of his head bounce off of the hard surface before letting go of his throat. She waited for him to stop grabbing at his head and neck to recover, watched him struggle, and waited some more for him to try and reach up and fight her off with his own two hands instead of those altered by the powers of others. His fists were weak, and she batted them away easily, shoving his hands back down and punching him one good time in the face before gripping him by the neck again.

 

“I’m going to take you back to my lab, and we’re going to spend a lot of time together,” she smiled, “but for right now, I want you to beg me not to kill you,” she murmured, getting close enough to his face to see the vein that bulged from his forehead and the sweat forming at his hairline. His fingers clawed at her hand weakly.

 

With great difficulty, he gathered enough air to hiss, “ _ Fuck you _ ,” between his clenched teeth. Spittle flew from his mouth as he did, gathering on his bottom lip.

 

She hummed thoughtfully in response and let go of his throat only to hurl her fist at his face once more.

 

Her knuckles ached with the force that she used to hit him, but it didn’t stop her. 

 

This was what would bring her back to life since Helen had shown up on her doorstep, sick and battered. She  _ needed _ this.

 

She hit him again, and then once more, hearing the sickening crunch of his nose beneath her hand as his eyes remained shut this time. The blood that flew from his broken nose stained her fist, and she felt a sick thrill zing through her at the sight of it.

 

Helen’s pale and feverish face flashed in her mind’s eye, melding disturbingly with her father’s face in his casket and her mother’s as she and Winston discovered her slouched over against her previously shared bed’s headboard.

 

“You can’t take another person away from me,” she growled through her teeth as she reared back to hit him again.

 

A voice called out from the torn open bank doors.

 

“ _ Evelyn _ ? Evelyn  _ stop _ !”

 

When she raised her gaze at the familiar, panicked, voice, she felt all of the wind get knocked out of her. The hatred burning thick and cloying in her chest fizzled almost immediately at the sound. Instead, her heart fluttered with hope and genuine relief. Evelyn was dizzy with the abrupt change in emotions, and her arms went weak as they withdrew from the body beneath her.

 

“You’re— awake…” she breathed in disbelief, reaching up to tear the goggles off of her own head. They clattered to the ground unceremoniously, and were forgotten about in seconds.

 

Helen stood tall in her Mrs. Incredible uniform, looking slightly pale, but otherwise unharmed. Looking  _ alive _ .

 

_ Thank God _ .

 

“ _ How did you—“  _ Helen started to ask, hands splayed in front of her body and her voice raised in pitch by utter shock.

 

“They said you were still unconscious,” Evelyn said, climbing to her feet with sheer shock in her tone. Her feet carried her over to Helen’s frozen form, forgetting all about the unconscious body behind her. The adrenaline coursing through her veins made her ankle feel significantly less like it was shooting pain up her leg as she went. She hesitantly raised her hands to Helen’s mask-concealed face, as if afraid to touch her lest this be an elaborate figment of her imagination.

 

Before she could rest her hands upon the colorless cheeks they were headed for, Helen caught her fingers in her hands with worry creasing her brows.

 

“Ev, your fingers—“

 

Evelyn looked down at the blood staining her hands and yanked them away, regretting having almost put them on Helen’s face.

 

“Shit, shit, I’m sorry,” she said, feeling jumbled up and flustered seeing her there and conscious so suddenly.

 

“I was goddamn worried about you, what happened? When did you wake up?” She asked with a voice that was stronger than last time, getting angry now at the turmoil she had been put through while apparently Helen had been on the mend this entire time.

 

“How are you here right now?” Helen elected to ignore her question by asking her own, a seriousness in her brown eyed gaze that suggested she was extremely worried about her being out of the perimeter of her mansion.

 

“What? Who cares about the house arrest, Helen? I thought you were in a coma or _worse_! Bob came and whisked you away from my house after— and why would you come to _me_ when you got hurt instead of a goddamn hospital? Are you insane? What if he hadn’t been able to find you, then what?” Evelyn’s thoughts ran a mile a minute, and she tried her best to get out one string of coherent words before another one looped itself into her mind and she ended up speaking over herself. 

 

“The news station said you were still incapacitated, so the real question is how are  _ you _ here right now?” she yelled, gripping Helen’s biceps with strong fingers and shaking her slightly to make sure that she was real and in front of her.

 

“Ev,  _ breathe _ , I’m okay,” Helen reassured her softly, lifting her fingers up to brush at dampness that Evelyn hadn’t realized had been building in her eyes.

 

“I went to you because Bob and I got split up, and I was close by, and I was half out of my mind with the nausea and fever… I guess my first instinct was to just get to your place. He wasn’t too thrilled with that part…” Helen admitted sheepishly, and cleared her throat before hastily pushing on. 

 

”I woke up the morning after getting to the hospital. My nurse kept my fever down and gave me fluids through an IV to fight the dehydration until the sickness wore off. I made Bob and the hospital staff tell the reporters that I was still passed out to hopefully play on Mimick’s ego and lure him out to the one bank he hadn’t— wait, is that how  _ you _ found him?” Those large, brown eyes were impressed with her detective work, and Evelyn waved off the compliment even as her cheeks warmed under the unspoken praise.

 

“Yes, it was, but don’t think you’re off the hook for leaving me in the dark! I was worried s—“ Evelyn’s rant was cut short by the lips that eased onto hers, as soft as a kiss from a loved one could be. She melted against Helen, bringing her hands up to rest against the taller woman’s shoulders. They parted after a moment, a mutual sigh dangling in the air between them.

 

“Am I forgiven?” Helen asked around a gentle, lopsided smile.

 

Evelyn rolled her eyes, but she couldn’t help the smile that tugged on the corners of her own mouth. She was just happy that Helen was  _ okay _ .

 

“Maybe. We’ll talk once your copycat friend is behind bars. Then, hey, maybe you can go visit  _ him _ every day and make him fall in love with you too, then scare him half dead by pretending to be on the cusp of death yourself,” she said, realizing too late her slip of the tongue.

 

Helen’s eyes went round before softening until they were partially lidded. Her lips parted to say something in response, but they were interrupted by the increasingly loud noise of police sirens.

 

“I should get you out of here,” Helen said instead, urgently, “We need to get him cuffed—“

 

“Don’t worry, he’s not going anywhere or doing anything for quite some time. He has a power dampening collar on. And I  _ may _ have knocked him out.”

 

Evelyn withdrew her hands from her shoulders and waved her off, “So, you take the credit for taking this asshole down. I’ll be fine.”

 

Helen was more than ready to object, resting her hand on Evelyn’s hip and stroking her thumb back and forth over the bottom of her t-shirt.

 

“I don’t need that. All that matters to me is that he’s put away and that  _ you  _ don't end up in solitary confinement somewhere that I’ll never be able to see you again.”

 

Evelyn sighed, seeing the set of the decision in her warm brown eyes and relenting without any more of a fight. 

 

“Fine. But we’re taking my car. You’re not swinging  _ me _ around this city like it’s some fucking jungle-gym.”

 

Helen’s laugh made her feel unbelievably lighter. She supposed that love would always do that, though.

  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We're on the last legs of this fic, so as a gift to you all for supporting me so immensely, I'll be releasing these last three chapters a day after each other through Thursday. Don't be sad though, because this isn't the last of the content you'll get from me! The day after the epilogue of this fic is posted, I'll be releasing the first chapter of my next Hevelyn fic: Professional Work.
> 
> You can read the synopsis here: bakedgarnet.tumblr.com/post/176175825076/coming-soon-professional-work 
> 
> Much love, and thanks for reading!


	14. Service

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Evelyn and Helen return to the mansion to a surprise, and something that was taken slowly finally gains speed.

Returning to Evelyn’s mansion was… eventful, to put it lightly.

 

On the way to her home, she’d spotted the helicopter hovering above the general area of her estate from half a mile away, and her stomach pitched and rolled as she eased onto the breaks and steadily crawled forward to delay what she was sure would be an inevitable move to a maximum security prison. Helen’s hand had reached out to squeeze her thigh in a silent declaration of support, and even that wasn’t enough to quell the anxiety tearing through her chest with sharp, gnawing teeth.

 

When she rounded onto her street and saw the swarm of police cars on her hilled front lawn, bright red and blue lights rotating and throwing color across the front of her mansion, her mouth went dry.

 

Maybe her signal imitator hadn’t worked afterall. She cursed the simplicity of what she had available to work with, blaming her lack of tools for her failure to make a device that did what it was supposed to do—

 

And then Helen was opening the car door, dressed head to toe in her crimson Mrs. Incredible suit and black mask, and walked with an extra weight of authority in her muscles toward the police. The visible shift, Evelyn considered now without the distraction of being shocked to see her, in her demeanor as Mrs. Incredible, or Elastigirl, whatever, was fascinating.

 

Her chin was held high, and she stood with her fists on her wide hips as she looked down at the officers speaking to her in intense tones, if the expressions on their faces were any indication. Evelyn was wondering why Helen seemed to tower over them, and realized that she was actually stretching her limbs and torso evenly so that she stayed in proportion and still gained several inches of height.

 

An amused smile tugged Evelyn’s face out of the frown it had been set in before she slowly found herself scrunching it back into a worried grimace. She caught herself drumming her fingers rapidly on the leather steering wheel clutched in her hands and forced herself to stop, shoving them into her lap. After a far too long moment of watching Helen speak with the officers through her tinted car window, she saw the hero turn around toward where she was sitting and motion for her to come out, a reassuring smile on her face that said everything would be okay. For some reason, Evelyn wasn’t convinced.

 

With immense trepidation, Evelyn turned the car off and unlocked the doors. She slowly tugged the handle toward her body, making the door open and allowing the cool night air to breeze through where she sat. Taking a deep breath, she exited the vehicle and closed the door behind her with more force than she had intended, locking the car and shoving her keys into her back pocket. She figured it was less incriminating to leave her backpack and utility belt full of technology in the backseat.

 

Her hands balled into faintly trembling fists at her sides at Helen’s nod to continue toward them, and she picked her feet up one at a time to force her way over toward the police. Her ankle throbbed with every step, and she found herself limping as she went, drawing Helen’s alarmed gaze down toward her foot. Realization dawned there as she realized that was where her ankle monitor had once been, and a wince as she likely imagined what Evelyn had to do to escape flashed across her face, otherwise carefully stoic when facing the officers.

 

Without hesitation, Evelyn held her wrists out in front of her toward the policeman with her head down and tilted away from Helen. The officer in front of her released a low chuckle and gently placed his hand atop her wrists to push them back down to her sides.

 

“Apparently, we’re not here to arrest you,” he said in his low and gravelly voice. Definitely a chain-smoker. She could smell it on his breath.

 

“What?” She asked as she tilted her head back up, confusion prominent in her tone. She turned to look at Helen, who stopped trying to contain herself and beamed at her widely.

 

“They found the goggles that you left behind on the scene and traced them back here,” she explained.

 

“So… why aren’t I being arrested again?”

 

“Because, Miss, you did what none of these other superheroes could do and single handedly took down Mimick. That’s what Elastigirl tells us, anyway. We were headed here to confirm your whereabouts after we found DevTech equipment on the scene. We ruled out your brother pretty quickly. He’s out of town on a business trip with a few other higher-ups, and has been for weeks.”

 

Evelyn turned her eyes up toward Helen again, feeling like her brain was in a fog. Truthfully, it was. She was nearing a full day without sleep, and having recently gotten back onto a semi-normal sleep schedule, this interruption of it was hitting her harder than usual. Her stomach growled angrily at her, and she realized too late that she had also forgotten to eat. _Again_.

 

“Okay, hold on, what the hell is happening?”

 

Helen seemed to be visibly restraining herself from reaching out to grab her up in some way, probably in a hug or a kiss, or some other variant of gesture that they weren’t allowed to do in public.

 

“They’re going to tug on a few ears and try and get your sentence minimized for your service!” Helen practically vibrated with excitement, and Evelyn just felt… shocked.

 

_My service?_

 

She was on the brink of torturing a man to get retribution for what he had done to her illicit lover— Evelyn wasn’t sure what part of that qualified as service done for the community other than getting him locked up, but that ultimately had never been her endgame until Helen showed up with no lasting damage done.

 

If this was what they needed to possibly get her back out in the street with freedom to her own whims once more, though, who was she to complain?

 

“I… don’t know what to say,” she murmured, eyes glazing over as she stared down at her mucked up sneakers.

 

“You could say… thank you?” Helen said softly, reaching a hand out and squeezing her shoulder before withdrawing. It was as affectionate as she could get, Evelyn could see, without raising any suspicion.

 

And thankful she was.

 

* * *

 

“You went _alone_?” Evelyn was pacing up and down the length of her living room, brows drawn together and forming a tightness between her temples.

 

Helen winced at the spike of her voice as she sat on the couch, and Evelyn nearly fought through the simmering rage beneath her skin enough to feel guilty.

 

Almost.

 

“I… convinced Bob that it would be smarter if only one of us went. We still aren’t sure about the technicalities of Mimick’s powers, but we didn’t want to risk giving him a chance to leech off of us _both_ again in case they had worn off from before, and I was the one who figured out where he would strike next anyway—”

 

“From a hospital bed, Helen! How did your husband okay that?”

 

“You should know me well enough to know that I was going to do what I thought was best regardless of what he said. _He_ knew that.”

 

Evelyn valiantly ignored the pang that shot through her chest at the suggestion that Bob knew her better. Not because it was inaccurate, they had been married for almost sixteen years now, but because it was being thrown at her like an accusation.

 

“Look, I’m not trying to argue with you… I just thought that I was going to lose you once, and to know that as soon as you were out of that hospital you were ready to throw yourself into the fire again…” Evelyn sighed, pressing her fingers to the bridge of her nose and tilting her head downward with her other arm wrapped tightly around her torso.

 

“That’s my job, Ev, and not to compare you two, but Bob understands that. He would have done the same thing. You’re going to have to get used to me sacrificing myself sometimes because it’s just what I _do_.” Helen’s voice was soft, and it was clearly meant to wrap around her body and eviscerate all of her unease, but instead it made Evelyn’s heart quicken.

 

“I don’t…” she grasped for words in the air, trying and failing to hold on to any that perfectly expressed how she felt, “know how to share you with the world. Your life, I mean. You will always be ready to play vigilante, throwing yourself in harm’s way to defend people who wouldn’t know they were in danger if it was boiling them alive. And I will always want to be selfish because me being selfish means that _you_ are always alive. It means that I’m not practically killing myself worrying over whether or not you’ll come back to me.” Evelyn’s voice grew smaller as she spoke, and she crossed both arms across her chest tightly, shoulders hunching forward to make herself smaller in Helen’s suddenly too intense gaze.

 

“I hadn't been that scared since—” she cut herself off and abruptly changed where her words were headed, “in so long. Not knowing if you would wake up again. I don’t know if I can keep—” she sighed deeply and heavily, eying the two quickly healing scars that ran from Helen’s cheek to her jaw and clenching her eyes shut.

 

“But it’s not about me, is it? Like you said, you’re gonna do whatever you think is best. I’m just… I have to learn how to be okay with that,” she sighed again, defeatedly, and opened her eyes back up to stare into the soft brown ones of the body sitting on her couch. Evelyn continued to stand and pace back and forth across the floor. Her bare toes dug into the fluffy purple rug as she walked, and she stopped suddenly, facing the still broken window with rays of sunshine leaping through it and throwing itself across her floor.

 

“And learning how to be okay with your superhero husband shattering my entire window,” she grumbled bitterly.

 

“The men are coming here to fix it as soon as they get cleared to come by. How’s the new monitor? It looks different,” Helen observed.

 

Evelyn glared down at it nastily, feeling the sleek box on the side of it dig into her still swollen ankle.

 

“I can’t believe they used rival technology on me,” she scoffed in disbelief, “I’m pretty sure that’s their way of saying they’re thankful for my ‘service’,” she threw her fingers around in quotes, “but they’re still pissed I got out.”

 

“Can you blame them?”

 

Helen’s voice was closer now, and Evelyn could hear her quiet footsteps as she approached her from behind. Thin, strong, arms slipped themselves around her torso, and Evelyn leaned back into Helen’s embrace. The tension she carried from her neck to her lower back suddenly eased its way out of her system.

 

“Thank you for trying— with me, I mean. I know your relationship with hero work is strained, to put it lightly. But I really do appreciate how much you’ve grown around it since… before.” Helen’s words were soothing in her ear, lips pressed against the side of Evelyn’s head as she spoke.

 

Evelyn placed her hands over where Helen’s resided against her stomach and continued to stare out into the bright spring day. She had a fleeting thought that she would have to get an exterminator for all of the nature life that had made its way into her home over the past few days.

 

“Yeah, well,” Evelyn huffed, trailing off.

 

Helen’s lips trailed to her ear, and she nipped it playfully. Evelyn jumped in her arms, taken off guard, and felt her heart rate spike in response. Her fingers tightened around where they covered Helen’s hands and she felt herself take a deep breath to take herself back down a notch.

 

“Remember when you were talking about Mimick being thrown in jail?” Helen asked, her lips brushing the shell of her ear with every word. A shiver tore down Evelyn’s spine, and she focused hard on the meaning of those words to form a response to them.

 

“Y-yeah, why?”

 

“You said maybe I could go visit him every day… make him fall in love with me too…”

 

Evelyn felt her blood freeze in her veins as she realized where this conversation was headed, and stiffened in Helen’s embrace. The taller woman hushed into her ear, rubbing her thumb up and down the exposed skin between Evelyn’s pajama shirt and her matching shorts. The material had ridden up when Helen had embraced her, and Evelyn only noticed now because the breeze that floated through the window felt like relief against her now burning skin.

 

“Do you love me, Evelyn?”

 

The question felt like a two ton boulder dropped onto her shoulders when asked to say it aloud, but the feeling of the truth in her chest made her able to carry it with sturdy hands. She swallowed heavily and turned her head a bit until she could look into Helen’s imploring gaze. She turned her body around fully in the hero’s arms, placing her hands on Helen’s collarbones and trying to straighten out the frown of deep thought on her own face.

 

 _Yes,_ she wanted to say. She wanted to scream it from her shattered window and from the top of the tallest building in Metroville.

 

But the fear that gripped her chest was louder than her will to admit it again, on purpose this time, and so she merely leaned up and pressed her lips to Helen’s with aching tenderness. She slowly let her arms wind around her neck, leaning up to deepen the kiss and hopefully convey every soaring feeling in her chest to the woman in her arms.

 

Helen’s ragged gasp sounded through her nose as she returned the kiss just as gently, slipping her hands up the back of Evelyn’s shirt and dragging her nails up and down the small of her back ever so lightly.

 

Evelyn pressed her tongue to Helen’s bottom lip, urging her lips to part, and when they did, their tongues connected and sent something as slow and thick as honey down Evelyn’s veins. Her arms pulled back down so that she could cup Helen’s jaw between her hands, fingers clutching right behind her ears while her thumb brushed the the slightly raised skin of her scars back and forth.

 

They pulled away after a long moment, Evelyn’s eyes still closed and her lips parted just slightly. She felt her lungs strain for air and realized that she had barely been breathing as they kissed.

 

Helen looked dazed when she opened her eyes again, her irises only half shown by how lidded her gaze had become.

 

“Was that a yes?” She whispered in the inch of space between their lips.

 

Evelyn closed her eyes again, “Yes.”

 

Suddenly she was airborne, being lifted off of the ground and up around Helen’s waist. Her shock at their role reversal was enough to stun her too much to even complain about it. Then Helen’s lips were on her neck, and she couldn’t form a coherent thought even if she wanted to.

 

They were moving at a snail's pace toward her bedroom, Helen far too distracted with leaving marks on her upper chest and collarbones to walk any faster. The noise that ripped out of Evelyn’s mouth was foreign to her own ears, and she felt her face grow warm with embarrassment even as Helen hummed, low and throaty against her skin.

 

“I liked that,” she murmured in between her ministrations, voice much huskier than it had been moments ago.

 

When they finally made it to the bedroom, Helen eased her down onto the bed, crawling over her body with a gaze that shone upon her like she alone dotted the sky with stars and controlled the push and pull of the ocean.

 

Evelyn felt her hands grow clammy as she watched Helen straddle her hips, sitting up straight as Evelyn laid back.

 

“Is this okay?” She asked, the first hint of shyness in her voice since they began creeping through.

 

Evelyn could only nod, swallowing down the dryness in her throat. Shaking off her own overwhelmed response, she reached up to Helen’s button down shirt and tried for the bottom button, but her fingers were too jittery with all of her nerves, and so she gripped it between both fisted hands and ripped it up the middle.

 

Buttons flew everywhere, bouncing off of her carpet and around the bed. One hit the dresser, if the sound of the tiny little thump a second later was any indication.

 

Helen stared down at her in shock, looking between Evelyn’s hands and her shirt several times before turning an unreadable look into her.

 

“I’ll buy you a new one,” Evelyn smirked, no longer feeling powerless.

 

Helen gripped her hands immediately and shoved them above her head, arching down until their torsos were parallel. She was a breath away from Evelyn’s face with a look in her eyes that promised something that would make Evelyn look back on this day and shiver every time, tensing in anticipation of something that had already happened in the past.

 

“I love you too,” Helen whispered against her lips before descending into her so deeply that Evelyn couldn’t tell where she ended and Helen began.

  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy day 2 of 3 in this chapter bomb! I've received quite a few requests for it, so the explicit continuation of the smut at the end of this chapter is posted separately under the title "Service, annexed". Enjoy the sin, for those who venture over to read it. It's still pretty damn fluffy.
> 
> The epilogue will be posted tomorrow, and the first chapter of Professional Work will go up on Friday. Much love :)


	15. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Four months after Evelyn's release under the condition of Elastigirl's "watchful eye," she's built quite a few things. Most of them are connections.

Evelyn being released early under the condition that ‘Elastigirl’ claimed full responsibility for her throughout the next six months had its benefits. Namely, Evelyn was able to spend a good amount of her time in her lab, alone with Helen’s supersuit-styled company, without anyone digging their grubby hands into their business.

 

They only had two months left under Helen’s “official” supervision, but no one else needed to know that but the court.

 

Evelyn walked slowly around the modified Elasticycle, elevated on one of the several platforms that she used to host her larger inventions. The sleek white and red accents glinted under the spotlight that highlighted it brighter than the rest of the rest of the massive laboratory. She dragged her finger across the porcelain colored exterior, admiring her handiwork. The bike held a protective coat of paint that she engineered herself, one that would protect the outside from any stains, skid marks or burns that could come upon it. If she was right, and she generally was when it came to her work, Helen should be able to drive the thing through a burning building, crash into a dirt forest and even have her youngest mark it up in crayon or with laser eyes, and every single mark should wipe right off with a damp cloth.

 

She picked up the flamethrower that had been sitting beside the bike for this specific reason and threw the fuel tank over her back, detangling the gas pipe from around her waist and leveling the ignition head directly at the side of it, right upon the jet black, orange and yellow  _ Incredibles _ logo that replaced the Elastigirl one on the first model. 

 

“ _ Hey _ , wait, if you hate it that much then at least let me give it a test run before you blow it up,” Helen’s frantic voice shot out from the entrance to the private elevator that let off at her lab.

 

Evelyn felt a smile grow on her lips behind her full face visor, replacing the frown of concentration she generally wore around her lab that Winston always scolded her for when she sat in boardroom meetings with him. 

 

“Oh, relax, I’m just testing something out,” she said without turning from the bike. She stepped back a few steps and pulled the trigger, watching with joy as the red-hot flames licked at the side of the bike and left a layer of soot across it. Releasing the trigger and shoving her visor up her face until it rested atop her hair, she found herself grinning widely when Helen was finally in her line of sight. Her crimson uniform looked delicious on her as usual, and she removed her mask as her other hand rested on her cocked hip.

 

“What’d you do that for?” She sounded exasperated, and Evelyn couldn’t even stop smiling long enough to say anything about it.  _ Damn _ , she loved her flamethrower.

 

“Just watch,” Evelyn said calmly, releasing the gas tank from off of her back and moving to hang it up back on the rack closer to her work desk. She meandered over to the sink on the far side of the room and grabbed a washcloth from the cabinet above it. She wet it underneath the water and wrung it out until the excess water dripped down the drain. Walking back over to the bike and pointedly ignoring Helen’s look of utter confusion, she swiped the cloth over the entirety of the parts of the bike affected by the flames and turned to Helen with a smug grin when the towel came away black and the paint of the bike was still perfectly intact.

 

Helen’s perplexed face morphed into one of shock and her impressed smile nearly made Evelyn’s heart burst from her chest. The scars Helen had gotten all those months ago were only faint pink lines that shifted a bit when she lifted the corners of her lips.

 

“ _ Wow _ ,” she said.

 

Evelyn’s self satisfied smile was only interrupted when she leaned up to press her lips against Helen’s briefly. As she pulled away, she realized something.

 

“Hey, how’d you get up here? I didn’t buzz you in.”

 

Helen shrugged one shoulder, propping her other hand on her hip as well as she idly looked around the lab at the rest of the half-finished products either hanging from overhead or sprawled out in a tarp-covered workspace on the massive cement floor.

 

“Judy let me up.”

 

Evelyn looked at her with narrowed eyes, “What? I told her she has to call me through the intercom first— you know what,” Evelyn allowed herself a deep breath.

 

“Dev,” Evelyn called out to the air.

 

“ _ Yes Evelyn? _ ” Her new AI called back out to her through the surrounding speakers.

 

“Remind me to explain the visitation policy and protocol to Judy before I leave.”

 

The AI, which she had affectionately named Dev of DevTech, took a brief pause before stating, “ _ Reminder set for you to remind Judy of the visitation policy and protocol. Would you like anything else, Evelyn? _ ” 

 

“No, thanks Dev,” Evelyn said.

 

“ _ No problem at all, Evelyn _ .” The AI went silent again until her next command, and Evelyn turned to look at Helen again, who despite having been acquainted with the artificial intelligence before, still stared up at the air in fascination.

 

“Your bike is now officially ready for all of your Super needs,” Evelyn said sarcastically,  “but there’s one more thing I want to show you,” she said. She felt excitement buzz throughout her entire body as she walked quickly over to her desk. 

 

The prototype for the very first cellular phone sat proudly on a little display stand she had thrown together to present it on.

 

It was larger than she had initially imagined it, but she was still working out the technology that would allow her to fit all that was inside of it into a more compacted form. The antenna that stuck up from the top gave it an extra four inches of height, and Helen leaned down over the desk to press her face right up to the phone, as far as she could without touching it.

 

“Evelyn,” she whispered reverently, her eyes as wide as saucers as she took it in.

 

“It’s a wireless house phone?” Helen asked, standing up straight and turning confused brown eyes onto her. Evelyn chuckled, endeared by Helen’s guess.

 

“It’s better. It’s designed to use Hertzian waves instead of cables to connect to others like it  _ across the country _ . You can call anyone from anywhere; you don’t have to be stuck to a corded phone in your house, or even in your house at all!” She could feel herself practically vibrating with excitement at the fact that not only had she single handedly figured out the algorithm for such a brilliant device, but that Helen was right there to share the experience with her before it was marketed to the public.

 

“It’s completely unprecedented, and I made it all by myself…  _ and _ I know that it works because I made Winston take the jet all the way to Florida with the other prototype to test them out.” Evelyn felt her face morph into something a bit smug— and she was smug. 

 

She was the most brilliant engineer she knew, and once the more developed version of her device hit the market, it was going to mean a legacy for she and Winston’s telecommunications company that surpassed both of their lifespans. DevTech would no longer just be one of the biggest players at the table in the country, but the  _ world _ .

 

Generally, Winston was the one to practically scream with excitement over this sort of thing, the one to boast and grin at her whenever he closed a huge deal— which happened often. He would try to relay the gravity of such things to his science-driven sister, wanting her to understand just how pertinent his ability to sell was.

 

Yet, Evelyn was taken back to her conversation with Elastigirl on the couch of DevTech headquarters half a year ago, when they went back and forth like two drunkenly debating philosophy majors. Evelyn could concede that the best sellers had the most buyers, but her device was proof to another thing that they had touched on later in their time together— right before Helen had figured her out. Before Evelyn betrayed her—

 

She cut the thought off short and refrained from wincing as her mind attempted to spiral down that path. It was behind them. They had grown. They were  _ happy _ now. She felt her shoulders rise and fall in a deep breath.

 

Evelyn’s new cellular phone was now an even further testament to her own need to produce products that weren’t  _ crap _ , that were purposeful and borne from necessity, not convenience. It was why she had always been the best, because she took her time and did the work where DevTech’s competition merely played the game. They mass produced utter bullshit to give the people what they want, and those other big corporations would steal money out of their wallets while they were busy scarfing down the most convenient, mind numbing, polluting escape from their problems.

 

Evelyn’s bikes were run electronically instead of on gas for a reason. All of her technology was environmentally sound.

 

She’d had far more time than she wanted to admit to blame herself for being under the thumb of the law, calling herself a monster and  _ hating _ herself for what she did to Helen and her family. That part still lingered. 

 

But the part of her that had begun regretting her motives behind the Screenslaver? Her core philosophy was still intact. While she had no plans in the future to hijack anymore minds to “impose her will on the world,” Evelyn would make damn sure that she outsold the competition by miles so that people would become so used to quality work and inventions that they, like herself, scoffed at mediocrity and learned to think for themselves.

 

And if that had to be her super power, or whatever cheesy bullshit Helen had called it when she had explained this revelation to her a month ago, then so be it.

 

So when she looked up into Helen’s searching eyes, the deep brown of them cast into further shadow by the stark overhead lights that illuminated her high-ceilinged lab, she felt at peace. She could meet Helen’s gaze and feel like she belonged as the object on which the hero looked upon so reverently. 

 

She could feel genuine when the kids came by her lab, and Dash sped around the massive floor in a whirlwind of questions and desire to test out her larger works, and Violet stood shyly beside her mother and still watched her warily from behind her shoulder despite the nice conversations Evelyn had been able to coax from her recently. It was okay that she was still hesitant because Evelyn finally had nothing to hide, and while she thought it would hurt to see any of the Parr kids be distrusting of her, it surprisingly still felt freeing to be able to say that she had nothing be time to prove Violet wrong. 

 

She supposed that building modified nursery furniture and tech-lined padding for Jack Jack’s room in order to circumvent at least a majority of his powers while keeping him contained  _ and _ safe had endeared her to his sister at least a little bit.

 

Bob had been far more complicated to get along with, but a couple months after Evelyn’s release, they’d had their moments. It fell somewhere along the lines of them both promising not to step on the other's toes when it came to Helen and the kids, and Bob reminding her which of them had a ring on their finger.

 

While that part had stung particularly, Evelyn could see where he was coming from. She had been able to do a lot of that with him, much to her dismay.

 

Helen and Bob had been married for sixteen years now, had three kids together, and have gone through countless trials and tribulations that Evelyn would never know the half of.

 

She knew that there were going to be boundaries, and for the sake of taking her slow route into integrating herself into the family through Helen, and now with her children, she could accept those boundaries as they were. Things between them all were subject to change.

 

Everything was, really.

 

Hell, look at her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't believe this fic is over. When I posted the first chapter I never would have imagined the community and friendships this fandom would have brought me. Thank you all endlessly for the hardcore love and dedication poured into this fic, and know that each of you have my heart and have filled it with indescribable joy. And before anyone in the comments can beat me to it, let me be the first to say:
> 
> This is so sad, Dev play Despacito.
> 
> See you all over at "Professional Work". If you have the desire to follow me on that journey, too, the first chapter goes up tomorrow. Much love!

**Author's Note:**

> If you're here, you've entered the hellhole that is an infant ship, and instead of crying about how there's almost no fan art or fics like I wanted to, I am being the change I wanted to see in the world. 
> 
> Welcome to Hevelyn (Hell)


End file.
